As always, C&C would be very much appreciated.

Dark Chronicles:
Prelude 1.

        Pain and numbing fear. These were the first sensations that told her
she was waking once more, rising yet again from the soothing, gentle oblivion
she had prayed yet again would take her at last, carrying her far from the
ruin that was her nearly shattered heart and the terror that she alone of them
seemed still able to endure.
        Another scream, and mingled with it the terrifying, screaming laughter
of their captor.
        `Mousse.' She thought with a numb helpless detachment. Shampoo would
follow, Mousse so drained and broken that he could do nothing save to watch
and whimper as she was tormented yet again. Then would come Ukyou. Ryoga was
already dead, an all too easy task once he had been trapped in his cursed
form, and she was lost, her madness divided between pleading for forgiveness
from his soul and the near witless screaming for her Ran-chan somehow to find
her.
        Then would come Tofu. Kasumi, mercifully, had died during the
beginning, incredibly, admirably stoic and silent in the face of pain and
terror that had had the man once destined to be her husband screaming and
nearly witless for release, although not, at least then, pleading for his own
life and soul. Perhaps, with the last vestige of what had once been a mind
capable of humanity or compassion, with the last tiny flicker of a soul once
able to understand warmth and laughter and emotion other than the twisted,
sickening perversion of demonic amusement and appetite, their captor had
spared her the agony that seemed to stretch back in her own mind into
nightmare eons beyond imagination or recall. She prayed still that it might
somehow be so. Who next? Tatewaki. He would rave again, his mind already
shattered and broken, ranting in imbecilic madness of the glory of his
sacrifice for his two loves and the splendour of the celebrations upon the day
when they should understand at last the fullness of his triumph, when they
would be freed from the accursed Saotome and be his own until the uttermost
end of time.
        She would cry then, listening to his madness, then to the screams and
her maniacal laughter as the pain tore at last and temporarily through the
protective insanity that held him as ferociously as any chain or bond, her
heart breaking again and yet again as she understood too late how impossibly,
desperately brave and faithful he had proved at the very last, before the
final shattering of his pride and with it, his soul and mind.
        "Oh my Ranma," She would whimper, almost silently, not ashamed to cry
whilst alone, pain more than any terror their tormenter could give tearing at
the very fabric of her being. "oh Ranma forgive him. He understood, if only a
little and for a moment. Oh my love, my life, forgive us all."
        Of the others she could not bare to think. Genma, bound now as had
been Ryoga in his cursed form, a shattered mindless ruin of the man he had
been, having long lost all power of thought and reason, would roar and howl in
witless agony for the little time their captor still troubled to spend in his
torment, after all, he gave her little sport now, less even than his life-long
friend whilst he had yet lived. At Genma's breaking, Soun had retreated
swiftly, his last hope lost, into memories of his wife and the three daughters
he had once had, when such an end as this was beyond all save the darkest
madness of nightmare. His end too, mercifully, had been swift.
        Nabiki would be last, before herself of course, her own torture
exquisite and prolonged, the screams and pleading in the cell next to her own
and the laughing wild words of her tormenter seeming to freeze her very soul
and heart while she fought desperately to hold only to the rage and the
hatred, praying to whatever gods still might hear her that her Ranma might
somehow still escape the crystal into which Cologne, desperate for a last
trump to play against the darkness, had sealed him ere her own and Happosai's
death during the final assault, for his protection and their own.
        The dungeon was bitterly cold. She shivered, trying even in her bonds
to curl about herself, desperate for what little warmth she might still gain.
She could not stand much more, she knew this. The others were already all but
broken, pale quivering shadows of what they had been. Only Ryoga through sheer
physical endurance and the desperate, struggling love for Ukyou he had found
after akari's death in the last bitter days  before his end, and herself, her
faith in Ranma a bright, shining thing that no pain or torment could break,
had shown any real resistance, and now, so utterly alone, only she was still
aware and rational enough to fight with what little remained to her. If she
broke her, if she shattered at last the last of the souls by which Cologne had
bound the crystal, then Ranma was her's, mind and soul, her's in absolution
and forever, and with his taking would end all hope for what remained of the
physical world and the broken fragments of humanity that yet fought against
the horror of the things from the darkness that had come to claim them, world
and souls. With that, her power, her triumph would be complete.
        She shivered again. Mousse's screams had ceased, dying to pitiful
whimpers before he fell at last into sounds beyond the reach of her ears. For
a long moment there was silence, then suddenly there came the echoing boom of
the sealing of his cell. She waited, knowing that Shampoo's savage, maniacal
screaming would soon begin, but instead she heard the sudden wild peel of
malicious, demonic laughter and a moment later the sound of approaching
footfalls.
        Terror leapt in her. She *never* changed her routine. Not once since
their capture had it altered. Each was tormented, the torment at first for
their benefit, then, as each broke, for that of those remaining as much as for
her own pleasure, but now the footfalls drew nearer until at last they halted
at the cell beside her own. The door opened, then the voice purred, soft and
silkily warm:
        "Awake my precious. A little play, for a while, and for her benefit
until I tire of you. A little pleading, just a little at first that she might
understand what will happen to her this time should she not choose to submit,
to bind her soul to mine."
        Then the screams began. She did not listen. She had learned to shut
out the worst of the horror. She waited, curiously astounded that she could
pick the moment the torture would end with such precision, counting down the
seconds with a numb, frigid detachment until the last screams had died to tiny
whimpers, then at last to silence.
        "Still just a little fire I see." The voice purred again. "A fine
struggle. What price for your release I wonder? After all, you are already
mine. Shall we bargain Nabiki? Shall I name a price, a payment in pain
perhaps, or in blood and soul? Come, you were always more than willing.
Perhaps a dream, a fantasy of the wealth and power you shall never have? A
moment with your poor, mad Kuno-chan perhaps?"
        Abruptly there came another scream of wild depraved laughter. Nabiki
did not answer. She would be passed responding for the moment, she knew that.
        For seconds that seemed to stretch to eternity, the laughter
continued. Then abruptly there was a crack, another tiny whimper, then the
door crashed closed once more and the footfalls drew near. It was time.
Fighting down the fear with a strength born of rage and desperation, she
dragged herself erect, facing the door that would be in a moment flung aside,
gathering what will and courage remained to her to face the pain and horror
that would soon begin once more. Then the door crashed open and the thing that
had once been a girl stood before her. For what seemed a timeless moment both
appeared frozen, she staring at the creature of nightmare, the blazing blue-
black hair wild and lifted as though with some inner power, the red blood-
covered lips parted in a vicious smile of demonic triumph and anticipation.
Then the thing that had once been Akane Tendo moved towards her and Kodachi
Kuno began to scream.