Emmaline hung on the rack from the cuffs that secured her wrists and ankles. The X shape spread eagled her without impeding Mavikim's access to her. The pasha was speaking to her but in his excitement, his clearly evident excitement, now that he had shed his robe he had switched back into Araybian which Emmaline couldn't follow in her current state. She was bound physically and cut off from the winds of magic and at Mavikim's mercy. The Pasha picked up a needle, the point of which glinted in the lamplight, and stalked around her lowering the point so that it trailed across her belly and up over her breast, leaving a thin red line but not actually drawing blood. She flinched away to the extent her bonds would allow it, which wasn't far but seemed to please Mavikim.

"Interesting tatoo," the pasha commented, lifting the needle away and seizing her wrist. Emmaline glanced down and to her surprise the golden serpent bracelet was gone, replaced by a tattoo that wound from her wrist to halfway up her forearm in astonishingly lifelike detail. She was too frightened to give the matter much thought at the moment however.

"Is that why we are here? To talk about tatoos?" she asked with as much bravado as she could summon up. Mavikim recoiled as though head been struck then his eyes narrowed.

"Eager to get started are we?" he asked with an unpleasant burr in his voice. He set the pin down and picked up a whip of heavy braided leather, slapping the butt of it into his palm with an audible snap. Emmaline laughed with derision she certainly didn't feel. Mavikim's jaw tightened.

"Something amuses you whore?" he asked, voice low and dangerous.

"You are just a man," she snickered, "all this talk of Mavikim, Master of the Djinn and it turns out your just an ordinary man. Very ordindary." Her glance down at his crotch was probably more insult than she should have used and he drew back his whip and cracked it down over her chest, the lash curling around sensitive flesh and making her yelp despite her best efforts to grit her teeth.

"You wan't to see what I am?" he demanded, setting the whip down and stalking over to another alcove. He returned a moment later with a battered brass lamp. He lifted the brass top slightly and Emmaline saw a swirling terrible darkness within that howeled with the hunger of a thousand winter storms. Solid darkness began to ooze from the lamp reaching for Emmaline like spectral fingers. She tried to recoil backwards but her bonds didn't allow it, terrifed and desperate to get away. Mavikim snapped the lamp shut.

"Maybe Ill give you to it when I'm done with you, hearing your screams when I open the lamp might be a pleasant amusement," he snickered with dark and evil relish. He leaned down and picked up a hooked knife.

"But not till I'm done," he crooned, moving up between her legs and leaning over her touching the tip of the knife to one breast. The tattoo exploded out of Emmaline's arm, transforming from ink to solid serpent in the space between eye blinks. The cobra sank its fangs into the Pasha's wrist with an audible snap of its jaws. Mavikim screamed and flung his arm back, losing his knife as he did so. The serpent clung on its tail whipping like a pennant flag in a gale as its jaws worried at the pasha's wrist. Finally the Arabyian managed to fling it free, sending the glittering serpent flying across the room to crash into a writing desk, overturning an inkpot and sending quills in all directions. Mavikim rounded on the serpent then on Emmaline, his eyes wide and enraged. He gripped his wrist, blood running between his fingers.

"You think a man in my position doesn't guard against poisons bitch?" he demanded.

"Honestly I hadn't give much consideration to the point of view of naked snake bitten men," Emmaline admitted with all the aplomb she could muster. Her breasts stung from the whip stroke and her wrists and ankles chafed from pulling fruitlessly at her bonds. Mavikim took a step towards her and the snake darted across the floor towards him. Mavikim had been expecting it and turned in time to seize the snake, twisting its head to prevent it from spitting in his eyes. Suddenly the snake was coiling trying to encricle the man's wrists. Mavikim hurled it away again before pulling a sword from a scabbard on the wall.

"I'm going to pour its venom sack into your eyes," he promised Emmaline, turning to search for the snake. Just in time to see its tail wrap around the lamp and drag it off the table where it had been set. Mavikim screamed in anger and charged after the rapidly slithering serpent, sword aloft.