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Judas Cradle

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The Witch Solana
Part of a story written by Kirsten Smart

Waiting.
Six weeks after the whipping, Solana was once again fetched by guards.
“It is time again, Witch!”
The Jailer fitted a key to her heavy fetters, unlocking her wrists. She did not resist as she was
forced onto her belly, a guard kneeling on her back. Her arms were pulled behind her wrists crossed
over, and cords were put about them. Solana gave a whimper as the cords were pulled painfully tight,
crunching into her flesh, biting bone, and then more cord, and more, was wrapped and wound about her
wrists. She could not move her hands, it was as if they had been cast in iron, their bite on her wrists
constant and burning in their savagery.
Satisfied with his work, the Jailer ordered her pulled to her feet, and she was marched from the
cell. They traced a familiar route to the torture chamber: descending into its dim depths. Solana’s legs
were weak with fear as they took her to an enclosure surrounded by torches.
Luisa Consuela leaned against a pillar, a hand on her hip. She wore a brief tunic of white, pinned
at one shoulder, leaving her arms bare as always. Its skirt fell barely below her loins, leaving her long
legs exposed; torchlight glinted on their lean muscularity.
Tiny flames reflected in those dark eyes. “Come with me, Solana Degas. I wish to introduce you
to your next torment.”
Solana was brought forward.
She had seen this obscene device once before, but now, confronted with it truly, her legs lost
their strength. She collapsed to her knees in terror. Sweat broke out over her body.
Five feet high at its apex, it resembled a tall, narrow stool; but in place of a ‘seat’ was an
eighteen-‐inch high pyramid of wood, its steep sides converging to a single, hideous iron point. Nearby
was a pulley and a winch, a heavy hook slung on the end of a long chain.
“Prepare her.”
“No! Please, please please!” Solana gibbered in sheer horror as she was wrenched up by her
trussed arms. They propelled her, stumbling and sagging and shrieking, to the hook, raising her arms up
behind her back and passing her bound wrists over it. It had the effect of doubling Solana forward with
her arms twisted up behind her, an echo of the hideous strappado she had seen before. “I beg you!”
she pleaded to Luisa.
“Pain will release the truth,” Luisa said coldly as she stepped to the winch.
Luisa turned the big wheel of the windlass, and by her tightly bound wrists, Solana’s arms were
wrenched upwards behind her back. She bent forward as the pressure increased in her shoulders,
gasping with the growing discomfort. But as Luisa turned the winch more and Solana’s wrists were
pulled higher, her arms were drawn upwards, past their natural resistance: muscles stood and striated,
her shoulders bunched and cracked loudly, the geography of her armpits twisted oddly. Now the pain
began, and intensified as another turn drew her arms higher up behind her.
“Oh, God! Stop!”
When her heels left the ground and her arms went higher still, true pain hit. For a time, Solana
teetered on her toes, arms wrenched high up behind her back, every muscle fiercely defined, her arms
quivering. Sweat was already streaking her ribcage from each armpit. Her calf muscles were bunched in
the effort to keep her weight on her toes. Pain was spreading through her shoulders and down her back.
Without hurry, at Luisa’s command, the Jailer fitted manacles to Solana’s ankles, each with six
inches of chain ending in a four-‐inch iron ring. As he stepped back, Luisa casually turned the wheel again.
The pain was immense. Lifted off the floor, light flashed in Solana’s eyes as hot agony speared
through her shoulders and along her taut triceps, lancing down her back and sides. It was more than she
could stand and she shrieked and screamed. It felt as though her arms were breaking. As the chain was
wound in, the iron rings trailing from her ankle fetters clattered and then cleared the ground also.
“Oh! Oh!” Solana’s shrieks filled the chamber as she slowly rotated above the floor.
Luisa turned the wheel, drawing in more chain, watching as Solana was hoisted higher and higher
in the strappado. Her arms, behind her back, cruelly and unnaturally strained, feet kicking futilely in mid-‐
air, the heavy iron rings swinging from her ankles. Luisa continued to raise Solana until her desperate
toes were five feet from the ground, then locked the windlass.
“I shall give you two hours to think upon what awaits you,” she told Solana.
Of all the tortures she had tried as a young girl, strappado had been Luisa’s most hated. She had
agreed an hour with her father. He had tied her slim wrists and elbows behind her back and winched her
into the air, and she had at once been shrieking, so quickly and intensely had the pain begun. The
muscles had been defined and bunched in her young arms as they were raised backwards up behind her
head, and her feet had kicked and reached desperately.
She had begged to be let down after just fifteen minutes. Her father had refused, and she had
slowly twirled for the hour, crying and shrieking. At the end of it, he had told her that she would hang for
another hour, deaf to her desperate pleading. When he had finally lowered her after more than two
hours, she refused to talk to him for a week.
When she had ears for his words again, he had explained that strappado could be very effective,
but hard to control; joints could dislocate within seconds and the damage could quickly become
permanent, and unlike other tortures, it could not be easily incremented. It was best saved for the strong,
the young, and the lithe.

Luisa had learned much more than just what pain was like, during her experiences of torture as a
young teen. She knew how to position a witch’s arms so that strappado would be intensely painful but
less damaging than if sloppily done; and she had learned the importance of letting the victim hang
before beginning any additional tortures. Once muscles were exhausted and she could no longer
struggle or thrash about in her pain, there was less chance of unplanned damage.
 

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When Luisa returned to the chamber, Solana still hung groaning, high off the floor. In the light of
torches her mahogany skin shone as if oiled. Her bound-‐together wrists were wrenched up behind her
head, their muscles still fiercely bunched and defined; but Luisa could already see that, drained of all
strength, Solana’s body had relaxed, lengthened and extended by inches. The pain, in that time, would
easily have doubled in intensity.
“Bring the Cradle.”
It took two men to shift the heavy Judas Cradle, as it dragged and scraped across the floor. Upon
Luisa’s direction it was placed below Solana’s feet, between the iron rings that dangled from her ankles,
the fearsome spike taunting her.
“Guide her legs,” Luisa ordered.
Eager indeed, the two guards took hold of Solana’s ankle chains, pulling in opposite directions
and spreading her shining legs wide apart. She shrieked, every tiny movement sending new horrors of
agony through her tortured arms and back. With legs drawn wide, the hairy black nest of her sex
hovered high above the waiting tip of the Judas Cradle. The guards could not conceal their arousal, cocks
hard.
Luisa began to unwind the winch. Still in the blinding pain of strappado after two hours hanging,
Solana was in a daze. But she again found the will to struggle as, her legs spread, she was slowly lowered
towards the cradle. But nothing could prevent her slow decent, and the guards, delighted with their
sport, held her legs stretched out in a tug-‐of-‐war.
Adrenaline gave her voice through her agony. “Please! You cannot!”
“Only suffering will wrest the truth from your lips.”
“I am innocent!” Solana insisted, her tone rising in her panic and dread. Strappadoed as she was,
she had no choice but to watch the spike draw near, between her widely-‐spread legs. “Please, stop!”
Her tormentors’ response was to pull even harder on the ankle rings, so that Solana’s legs were
stretched wider still, tendons and muscles stark, opening up her black and hairy ravine. Luisa’s eyes
were fixed on her victim, her muscles shifting as she eased the winch around, controlling Solana’s slow
descent. A few more inches, and the hard tip of the Cradle was right between the shining, parted globes
of Solana’s buttocks, gently nosing the hairs that surrounded her twitching anus. Goosebumps appeared
all over Solana’s naked body at its terrifying touch.
“Oh, dear God!” Sweat streaked her ribcage from her armpits, her bare back was wet, and
perspiration dripped from her face and neck, the pain of strappado now compounded by the heart-‐
pounding dread of this new horror.
After half a minute’s pause, the two guards still holding Solana’s long legs outstretched, Luisa
released the chain. Solana descended onto the spike; her mouth flew open in shock as cold iron invaded
the taut ring of her anus and pushed itself inside by two inches. At once her arsehole was spread slightly,
the invasion intimate and terrible. “Oh God! God!”
Luisa held the descent.
It was then that Solana discovered the horror of this torture. In strappado, she could not possibly
gain any leverage to lift herself off the cradle; her arms, unnaturally wrenched high up behind her back,
were completely without strength. Her legs were held obscenely wide by the two guards for the Judas
Cradle’s cold invasion. She was anally impaled, naked on top of the narrow pyramid, without any means
to save herself.
Even in her pain and fear, Solana felt a terrible wave of humiliation. She could see the faces of
the guards, the Jailer, the beautiful Luisa, faces filled with lust and a desire to see her suffer upon this
terrible device; faces amused at her position atop the Cradle.
Solana wailed. “Please, Senora Luisa, please take me off this!”
“You know I will not. We must seek the moment at which your mind is no longer your own, and
only the truth can be spoken.” With those words, Luisa turned the wheel again and the winch paid out
more chain. Solana gave a wail of horror as she sank further onto the Cradle spike. Her bowels
automatically spasmed, trying to force the intrusion out, but she could not rise.
Luisa turned the wheel again, lowering Solana further. The vile spike pushed deeper inside her,
spreading the flower of her sphincter wider. Solana’s jaw cracked as she clenched her teeth, arms
quivering up behind her head. Her legs, still held wide by the guards, shook and shuddered with the
growing agony.
“It begins to hurt,” Luisa noted, with satisfaction. “Release her legs.”
The guards released their hold on Solana’s chained ankles; and her legs fell against the steep
sides of the cradle. She did not even try to use her legs and feet to lift herself off the spike that was
inside her; every small movement caused pain from the iron already violating her arse.
On top of the pain of the monstrosity inside Solana’s rectum and the torture of strappado, the
humiliation was unbearable. She could see that every cock in the room was hard: sitting atop the Judas
spike, shining sweat, bound, moaning as her bowels were penetrated, she looked like a woman in
orgasm.
But the truth was far more cruel. Luisa turned the winch. As chain was released, Solana’s anus
sank deeper onto the spike, and she screamed again, fresh tears squeezing from her eyes. Another turn,
now five inches of the cradle inside her arse, her sphincter spread by nearly three inches. Solana’s
bowels heaved, but to no avail.
Again Luisa paid out more chain. Solana shrieked and cried out as the spike pushed deeper,
forcing her anus still wider. She was shaking, the pain roaring up her spine, driving fresh runs of sweat
from her armpits.
Luisa released more chain. Solana grated further down onto the Cradle: it disappeared up into
her arse, and again she screamed in pain. From the hairy nest between her shining thighs, urine
streamed down the steep sides of the Judas Cradle, splattering to the floor far below her dangling toes,
steam crawling into the chill air.
“Where’s your pride now, you fucking half-‐breed?” The shout of a guard was echoed by laughter
from the others. Solana’s head sagged forward, tears streaking her face, her mouth contorted in pain as
she fought to endure.
 

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But the torture had not even begun.
“Bring the weights,” Luisa commanded.
Solana had not imagined that such horror could be added to her torment. But as she suffered
atop the awful Cradle, seven inches of wood inside her, guards fetched lead ingots, placing them close
by. Such was the ingots’ weight that each impact sent a shock through the floor that Solana could feel in
her gut. The tears fled her eyes and she shook her head.
“No, no, no,” she begged.
The strong muscles in Luisa’s arms stood as she hefted one ingot in each hand. “Thirty pounds
apiece, witch. These should hasten your epiphany.” With that, she slung the ingots’ hooks through the
iron rings that dangled from Solana’s ankles, and let go.
Sixty pounds wrenched on Solana’s shining legs, and with a dreadful scream, she was dragged
down another inch onto the Judas spike. At the same instant, her strappadoed arms were twisted an
inch higher behind her head, her straining shoulders cracking loudly, pops coming from her spine. Her
rectum, distended, stretched, sent waves of agony as if her pelvis had shattered, muscles cramping and
tearing. She had no strength to fight as the heavy weights dragged her another down the cradle, scream
after scream as her shoulders bent and her rectum was speared ever deeper.
The guards were grinning, watching the wet, naked girl suffering atop the cradle, its upper apex
deep inside her arse, her sphincter spread by inches. Tears and snot spilled from a downturned face
framed by her woolly cascade of hair. Her hanging breasts shook with her sobs and cries. In the
dungeon’s chill, her wet body steamed. She had never known such humiliation, taking this obscene spike
inside her rectum, feeling it searching her very bowels.
“Let us leave her to sit and think upon her confession,” Luisa said. Leaving two guards to watch
over Solana, she left the chamber.
Wrenched high up behind her head, Solana’s twisted arms roared with pain, the ropes biting, her
shoulders close to dislocation. Pain speared down her back. Her legs, now with the lead ingots hanging
off each ankle, were burning with strain, her knees beginning to ache; the manacles on her ankles
grinding cruelly into bone: but nothing compared to the agony of the Judas Cradle. It seemed to have
penetrated to her very core, filling her abdomen with a ravaging pain as if she was being split in two.
Every breath hurt.
Time crawled. Muscles grew weaker and tore. Tendons and ligaments swelled and pain flared in
Solana’s shoulders and elbows, her straining hips and knees, her spine. All added to the suffering that
ran streaks of sweat down her goosefleshed ribcage from each grotesquely distended armpit, or dripped
from her downturned face.
Another two hours.
The flames of torches reflected in the sweat that polished Solana’s mahogany skin like a dark
mirror. A droplet quivered on the end of one nipple as she gasped and heaved, her arms twisted up
behind her, impaled upon the Judas Cradle.
It was Luisa alone who returned to the torture chamber. She slowly circled the mulatto skewered
on the Cradle’s tip, her eyes taking in every taut and defined muscle, every rib, every bead of sweat.
Held by the weight of the ingots, Solana’s legs were motionless, shining. She groaned.
“Have you found the truth?”
Solana could barely raise her head. A long string of snot hung from her nose. Her wet lips were
parted. Her teeth chattered weakly as she breathed. Finally, the words came.
“Rot in Hell.”
Luisa could not help but smile. Here was a woman of strength and incredible endurance. But the
game was far from over. Without hurry, Luisa hefted two more of the heavy lead weights, grunting as
she lifted them, hooked them over Solana’s ankle rings, and released.
A hundred and twenty pounds dragged on Solana’s ankles, tearing her legs, and dragging her
further down onto the Judas Cradle. She was screaming; there was a sickening crack from somewhere
within her bowels as the wood thrust deeper, distorting and distending her innards.
Solana’s screams went on: heart-‐rending, cries of agony that echoed through the torture
chamber, disturbed the anguished rest of prisoners. A bright red trickle of blood ran down one side of
the wooden Cradle, groaning sounds coming from inside the tortured woman. At the same time, her
wrists were held fast, her descent accommodated only by the stretching of her own body as her bound
arms were pulled vertically behind her back, her spine lengthening, her hips cracking loudly.
Ten minutes. Solana’s screams slowly died to long, low whimpers of pain. The agony was no less;
but exhaustion stole her breath and reduced her to moans.
“Confess to me,” Luisa urged. “Confess, and I will take you off. I will stop the pain. Just confess,
and it stops.”
Solana’s head fell forward. Her twisted arms shone, her own elbows inches from the back of her
head, muscles fiercely defined in their straining confinement. Another line of blood ran from beneath
her. She sobbed and groaned aloud, but no confession came. Luisa put her hand to one wrenched and
muscle-‐tight thigh, feeling the nap of fine hairs, the slickness of perspiration. “May God guide you
quickly to reason.”
Solana was unable to reply. Through eyes that swam with pain, she saw Luisa stride into the
depths of the chamber, the torchlight and shadows flirting with the fluid muscles of her bare limbs, the
playful dance of her tunic’s tiny skirt at her buttocks.
It had already been many hours, and now, as the night crawled, Solana suffered on, moaning and
shrieking into the echoing darkness, her skin glossed with sweat. The pain was unending, her head lolling
from side to side in anguish, her black hair sweeping her bare breasts. Her arms, wrenched up behind
her back, roared in unceasing agony, her shoulders twisted and bunched, ligaments and tendons torn
and tortured. And always, the unceasing agony of the Judas Cradle. Dragged down by a hundred and
twenty pounds of lead hanging from her ankles, the narrow wooden pyramid was buried seven inches
inside her rectum. Agony racked her colon, her spread and torn anus.
From time to time, the guards standing nearby heard her muttering breathlessly, hysterically, as
if in prayer or desperate pleading, imploring Death to embrace her.
The torches guttered and flickered, were refuelled, burned on.
 

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The guard was changed, early in the morning. The new sentries stood and watched the ongoing
sufferings of Solana impaled upon the Judas’ spike, twisted and wrenched and restless in her agony.
Finally Luisa Consuela returned, refreshed and beautiful from a night’s sleep. She wore a simple
garment fastened at the neck by a fine brooch of gold, a halter that kept arms and shoulders bare, and
left her back naked to the downy curve of her buttocks. Its skirt fell almost to her ankles, but a side-‐split
to the hip allowed freedom of her gleaming legs.
She paused, as was her habit, to tie her hair, bunching it on top of her head and fastening it with
gold clasps, baring her graceful neck. “Well, Witch? Are you any closer to the truth?”
After a full night of suffering, still conscious but exhausted and weak, Solana said nothing. Her
head remained bowed between her twisted and racked shoulders. Only the heaving of her wet and
muscled belly told of her ongoing anguish.
Luisa circled her prisoner. Every one was different; but being an effective torturer meant reading
the physical limits of the subject, and adopting a technique that would push her beyond her pain
threshold without damaging or crippling her body. In Solana’s case, Luisa saw, she had read well.
Solana’s body was supple and strong, and with the right bindings her arms had been pulled straight up
behind her back without the shoulders dislocating. The pain must have been exquisite.
Likewise, a gradual descent upon the Judas Cradle had meant that there would only be
superficial damage to Solana’s anus and rectum, and that recovery would be assured. But the pain of
such a deep, impaling intrusion would be like death itself.
And there was still more that could be done.
Solana’s eyes had been downcast, lids halfway closed, but when Luisa came before her, clutching
two more lead ingots, the beautiful mulatto’s head lifted a little and her expression became dread. “No
– no, no!” As adrenaline flooded her veins, she suddenly found life, but could not move for her bondage,
and could only watch as Luisa hooked the new ingots over her ankle chains.
“More to think about,” Luisa goaded, and released them.
One hundred and eighty pounds were suddenly slung from Solana’s ankles, and the
consequences were instant and terrible. So weighed, she slid more than an inch further down the Judas’
spike, its tip seeming to touch her very heart as its breadth spread her anus more than a hand-‐span
wide. Despite the inch she descended, her wrists remained where they were, held by the chain; it was
her arms, shoulders, and spine that accommodated the stretch, and the agony exploded through her
entire length. Even her legs, with ninety pounds slung from each ankle, felt as if they were tearing from
her body.
The screaming was dreadful.
Luisa watched as Solana’s long shrieks of agony echoed from the stone walls. There was no
struggling, no ability to resist, only an exponential compounding of pains already suffered, an
overwhelming, all-‐engulfing horror.
Still Solana screamed. Not just cries of pain, but maddened animal roars of agony.
“Let the truth come!” Luisa shouted. “Confess, and you shall be free!”
But Solana did not confess. Bathed in sweat, running snot and urine and tears, her skin wet and
her belly trembling even as pops and cracks came from her distending and stretching body, she gave
voice to her agony in shriek after howl, a piteous creature of suffering. Her screams lost their magnitude
as her voice became gradually hoarse, but she wailed endlessly as, little by little, she was further
skewered on the Judas Cradle by the oppressive weights slung from her ankles. Nine inches of the
obscene monster were now deeply buried inside her rectum. Her shoulders were all but wrenched from
their sockets, her back and arms pulled fully perpendicular in the merciless strappado, Her legs, slung off
the sharply-‐sloped sides of the cradle, were defined and strained hideously by the terrible weights
stretching her ankles.
Luisa stepped close and looked up into the suffering face. She put her hands on the wet and hot
skin of Solana’s taut thighs. “I can stop this,” she promised. “Surrender to the truth, let God’s words
come from your lips and your pain will be lifted.”
Solana did not reply.
“Let her suffer on,” Luisa casually ordered, as she strode again from the chamber with her long
dress playing with her legs, the muscles of her naked back shifting with the grace of a goddess.
For another six hours, Solana was left to suffer upon the Cradle. Pains speared through her
rectum with such vile intensity that she vomited. Every breath brought shattering horror, every beat of
her heart sent a reverberation of suffering through her ribcage. Her limbs, wrenched and stretched,
tormented her to the core.
And yet, she did not call out her confession.
When Luisa finally returned to the chamber, it was to see Solana’s head hanging forward of her
twisted arms, her body unmoving save the random heaving of her belly. Unconsciousness was close, and
there was little more that could now be added to her suffering.
Luisa stood to admire the dark skinned witch so deeply impaled upon the Judas Cradle Solana’s
confession would come, but it would not be today.
With the weights taken from Solana’s ankles, she had been winched up off the Judas Cradle,
inches of wet, steaming, stained wood sliding out of her rectum. Lowered to the floor, her bound wrists
were unhooked from the chain. With her wrists still fast in their crushing bindings, she was dragged back
to her cell.
Only then, held by three guards, were her hands freed; but her still-‐agonised arms were guided
at once into the manacles that hung open against the slimy wall, and their iron was closed tightly and
snugly about her wrists.
So, fresh from torture, she slumped once again with arms chained over her head, the pains and
cramps still roaring in her swollen shoulders and an agony in her bowels. She could smell her own
armpits, the powerful aroma of suffering.
- End... this stage of Torture -
 

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anyone know why its so hard to find quoom stuff online? i really want the conquered trilogy and inquisition hell 2. is it because this type of stuff isnt popular?
 
This is a torture device I've been thinking about a lot lately!

Here are a couple of particularly vivid illustrations - apologies if they've already been posted here.

Alongside is a rendition of how it might look if MY fat arse were to be placed on the Judas Cradle. This is thanks to the genius of Messaline, a super-talented lady who can place me in whatever agonising and humiliating position she wishes, any time she wishes!

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this torture was not so bad for the underweight people, but it was very painful for the fat ones
 
The Witch Solana
Part of a story written by Kirsten Smart

Waiting.
Six weeks after the whipping, Solana was once again fetched by guards.
“It is time again, Witch!”
The Jailer fitted a key to her heavy fetters, unlocking her wrists. She did not resist as she was
forced onto her belly, a guard kneeling on her back. Her arms were pulled behind her wrists crossed
over, and cords were put about them. Solana gave a whimper as the cords were pulled painfully tight,
crunching into her flesh, biting bone, and then more cord, and more, was wrapped and wound about her
wrists. She could not move her hands, it was as if they had been cast in iron, their bite on her wrists
constant and burning in their savagery.
Satisfied with his work, the Jailer ordered her pulled to her feet, and she was marched from the
cell. They traced a familiar route to the torture chamber: descending into its dim depths. Solana’s legs
were weak with fear as they took her to an enclosure surrounded by torches.
Luisa Consuela leaned against a pillar, a hand on her hip. She wore a brief tunic of white, pinned
at one shoulder, leaving her arms bare as always. Its skirt fell barely below her loins, leaving her long
legs exposed; torchlight glinted on their lean muscularity.
Tiny flames reflected in those dark eyes. “Come with me, Solana Degas. I wish to introduce you
to your next torment.”
Solana was brought forward.
She had seen this obscene device once before, but now, confronted with it truly, her legs lost
their strength. She collapsed to her knees in terror. Sweat broke out over her body.
Five feet high at its apex, it resembled a tall, narrow stool; but in place of a ‘seat’ was an
eighteen-‐inch high pyramid of wood, its steep sides converging to a single, hideous iron point. Nearby
was a pulley and a winch, a heavy hook slung on the end of a long chain.
“Prepare her.”
“No! Please, please please!” Solana gibbered in sheer horror as she was wrenched up by her
trussed arms. They propelled her, stumbling and sagging and shrieking, to the hook, raising her arms up
behind her back and passing her bound wrists over it. It had the effect of doubling Solana forward with
her arms twisted up behind her, an echo of the hideous strappado she had seen before. “I beg you!”
she pleaded to Luisa.
“Pain will release the truth,” Luisa said coldly as she stepped to the winch.
Luisa turned the big wheel of the windlass, and by her tightly bound wrists, Solana’s arms were
wrenched upwards behind her back. She bent forward as the pressure increased in her shoulders,
gasping with the growing discomfort. But as Luisa turned the winch more and Solana’s wrists were
pulled higher, her arms were drawn upwards, past their natural resistance: muscles stood and striated,
her shoulders bunched and cracked loudly, the geography of her armpits twisted oddly. Now the pain
began, and intensified as another turn drew her arms higher up behind her.
“Oh, God! Stop!”
When her heels left the ground and her arms went higher still, true pain hit. For a time, Solana
teetered on her toes, arms wrenched high up behind her back, every muscle fiercely defined, her arms
quivering. Sweat was already streaking her ribcage from each armpit. Her calf muscles were bunched in
the effort to keep her weight on her toes. Pain was spreading through her shoulders and down her back.
Without hurry, at Luisa’s command, the Jailer fitted manacles to Solana’s ankles, each with six
inches of chain ending in a four-‐inch iron ring. As he stepped back, Luisa casually turned the wheel again.
The pain was immense. Lifted off the floor, light flashed in Solana’s eyes as hot agony speared
through her shoulders and along her taut triceps, lancing down her back and sides. It was more than she
could stand and she shrieked and screamed. It felt as though her arms were breaking. As the chain was
wound in, the iron rings trailing from her ankle fetters clattered and then cleared the ground also.
“Oh! Oh!” Solana’s shrieks filled the chamber as she slowly rotated above the floor.
Luisa turned the wheel, drawing in more chain, watching as Solana was hoisted higher and higher
in the strappado. Her arms, behind her back, cruelly and unnaturally strained, feet kicking futilely in mid-‐
air, the heavy iron rings swinging from her ankles. Luisa continued to raise Solana until her desperate
toes were five feet from the ground, then locked the windlass.
“I shall give you two hours to think upon what awaits you,” she told Solana.
Of all the tortures she had tried as a young girl, strappado had been Luisa’s most hated. She had
agreed an hour with her father. He had tied her slim wrists and elbows behind her back and winched her
into the air, and she had at once been shrieking, so quickly and intensely had the pain begun. The
muscles had been defined and bunched in her young arms as they were raised backwards up behind her
head, and her feet had kicked and reached desperately.
She had begged to be let down after just fifteen minutes. Her father had refused, and she had
slowly twirled for the hour, crying and shrieking. At the end of it, he had told her that she would hang for
another hour, deaf to her desperate pleading. When he had finally lowered her after more than two
hours, she refused to talk to him for a week.
When she had ears for his words again, he had explained that strappado could be very effective,
but hard to control; joints could dislocate within seconds and the damage could quickly become
permanent, and unlike other tortures, it could not be easily incremented. It was best saved for the strong,
the young, and the lithe.

Luisa had learned much more than just what pain was like, during her experiences of torture as a
young teen. She knew how to position a witch’s arms so that strappado would be intensely painful but
less damaging than if sloppily done; and she had learned the importance of letting the victim hang
before beginning any additional tortures. Once muscles were exhausted and she could no longer
struggle or thrash about in her pain, there was less chance of unplanned damage.

Does anybody know the source of the second and third pics?
 
Krotho! Veglia or Judas Cradle! Many confuse it with the torture of wooden horse! But there are huge differences!
Here are two pictures that show the difference!
Pictures 3 and 4 are works by one of my favorite , Noble Vulchur.
 

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