Chapter 4: The Trophy Hunter

I lifted my head, my eyes meeting his. I would not speak. My silence would be my shield.

He smiled, a thin, cruel twisting of his lips. “Silent treatment? That’s fine. We have plenty of time to get acquainted.” His gaze dropped to my feet. “Well, since you’re not going anywhere, let’s start the collection.”

He knelt before me. This was not the act of a warrior claiming a prize from an honored foe. This was the act of a collector, an objectifier. He was not defeating Wonder Woman; he was disassembling her, piece by piece, turning symbols of power and heritage into inanimate objects for his possession. It was a desecration aimed at my very identity, a denial of my personhood. His hands worked at the fastenings of my left boot. I focused on the feeling, the slight pull on my calf muscles, the way the tough, blessed leather scraped against my shin guard as he worked it free. My foot emerged, pale against the grimy floor. I looked at it, a warrior’s foot, strong and high-arched, with toes straight and neat, a foot that had walked the fields of Elysium, now so vulnerable, already being coated in a fine layer of dust. The cold of the concrete was no longer just a shock; it was a constant, seeping violation.

“Magnificent,” he breathed, holding the boot up to the light. “Now it will stand on a shelf in my study. A perfect trophy.”

He removed the other. Next, he reached for my head. This was more intimate, more invasive. His fingers, cool and dry, brushed against my hair as he unfastened my tiara. “And this,” he mused, “the crown of a princess. It’s also a weapon, isn’t it? A boomerang. Really? How… quaintly theatrical. Doesn’t do you much good now, does it?” He plucked it from my brow. The familiar weight vanished, and I felt strangely exposed, as if a part of my very skull had been carved away.

He then took my wrists, one by one. As his fingers touched the Bracelets of Submission, I felt the ultimate desecration. My bare wrists felt unnervingly slender, the powerful veins and tendons now exposed. I instinctively flexed my hands, the muscles in my forearms contracting, a useless display of the strength I could no longer fully command. He had completed his ritual of reduction.