- Hofrax: [addressing Athalia, who has been stripped naked and stretched taut on a torture rack, and is in immense agony as she is slowly tortured to death] If you're afraid to use the scepter to save yourself, you're certainly never going to give the secret to us. And so Ankaris has relented. He's given me permission to kill you. Ah, I intend to do it very slowly. The secret of the scepter will have to remain a secret.
- Princess Athalia: Sss... so... someday someone will come and stop you... uggglmmmm!
- Hofrax: Ha ha! Who? One of your rebels? Our soldiers march within the hour to hunt them down.
- Princess Athalia: [grimacing in agony] Ahh .. ahhgggh! Ohhh... owwww!
- [on Princess Athalia's egalitarian principles]
- Ankaris: She honestly believes that peasants are as good as we are.
- Hofrax: It's not pain that breaks them. It's fear. Knowing that they are absolutely helpless.
- [tightens the torture rack, causing the naked Princess Athalia to writhe and scream in agony]
- Hofrax: You are helpless aren't you? I can do anything I please to you. And there's nothing you can do.
- [Athalia moans in pain as Hofrax stretches her again]
- Princess Athalia: In a few days I'll be dead. Whoever holds the scepter cannot be killed by human hands. And it was human hands that loosed the spider that is poisoning me. The scepter is my only chance. I'm going to live. And we're all going to live in freedom!