TW: Gore, Eye Torture, Fire Torture, People in Severe Pain
“My fellow witnesses”
His voice carried over the waiting crowd. Were it not for the circumstances, the Amphitheatre would have been beautiful. Deep brown wood inset with intricate gold glowed in the flickering torchlight. The sky, revealed in the open-air theatre, grew grey in with the setting sun. And the circular stage set with embossed golden tiles, portrayed a fruitful harvest under fearsome mountains.
But the gold had now faded, tinted under blood flow and lackluster cleaning. The grout soaked with red held a rot that refused to release guilt.
And around the stage, sat the few hundreds that remained. Grinning in the rose-gold glow. Their deep robes, uniform and modest, left little room for shadows, as they became a blanket of eager eyes.
He spoke to them, in a sing song voice to please the gods.
“We gather here to see our efforts bare fruit. As each day passes, we step closer to that horizon we chase, and today, as we do all days, we clear one more obstacle from our path.”
He stretched out a hand, grey and taught, as if the bones had grown too long for the skin. He grinned down at the person kneeling before him, their hands bound and their face bloody.
The Herald turned and stretched his arms out to the awaiting public, parting his arms like the desperate branches of an ancient tree. He hunched like twisted roots and sneered at the whipping breeze. The fabrics hanging from his gnarled limbs billowed like willow leaves and his eyes were set deep and clouded.
“Long have you awaited this day,’ he called, his footsteps echoing along the tiled stage, ‘and as always, your patience shall be rewarded.”
A cheer echoed from the crowd, a bellowing, uniform roar.
“But first,’ he said, turning to his captive, ‘a cleansing.”
With an eager step, he lunged forward to grab the kneeling figure by their hair hoisting them off the ground. They struggled for only a moment, before biting their tongue and snarling at the Herald. He drew from his robes, a thin golden dagger, sharpened on each side to a razor edge. His captor drew in a sharp breath and shut their eyes tight, but the herald brought them in close and slashed a clump of hair from their scalp.
He dropped them to the ground, holding the lock above his head like an enemy flag.
“Today, they who oppose us will take their place,’ he smiled, ‘and all shall be just.”
In a flurry of movement, he hunched over them and hacked away at their hair, letting the clumps fall to the cold floor. He worked feverishly, leaving only a thin, mangled fuzz over their head. When his work was complete, he rose again to the cheers and bellows of the crowd, grinding his foot into his prisoner’s ribs.
They lay on the ground, panting. Suddenly aware of the cold. They shuddered, and forced their gaze skyward, at the grey sunset, and the withering forest just visible beyond the Amphitheatre walls. They didn’t attempt to hold back tears but studied the world beyond.
“Traitor,’ He raised a hand, silencing the onlookers, ‘as you have attempted to stifle our gifts,’ he paced around them, ‘we shall take yours. As you have threatened the perfection of our people, we shall make you imperfect. As you,’ he kneeled down beside them, grabbing them under the chin and forcing their gaze to meet his, ‘would steal the future we have worked so hard for, we will ensure you never see yours.”
He dropped them to ground and called out once more.
“Now! Bring forth the Staves of God!”
A heavy set of double doors off to one side of the stage were thrown open. Wheeled out on a sturdy wooden trolley, came a sneering furnace, blistering hot coals sizzling in its stomach. Sitting in the faded flames, white hot and buried under smoldering coals, were two long iron pokers, with tips rounded to bulbs.
As the staves and their fiery bed were heft toward the center of the Amphitheatre, the crowd roared in glee. A few, children mostly, turned their heads or shut their eyes, only to be deterred by a parent’s swift hand or an Augurs glare.
The Herald turned to face his captor, tears flowing down their stony face.
“This is a kindness, my dear,’ he said, ‘Sight in all its capacities is meant to show us what is ahead. From birth you were doomed to the present,’ he leant in close and grinned, ‘and through action you are doomed to nothing.”
They broke their gaze from the setting sun and turned to look the Herald in the eye.
“If that is the case, my lord,’ they spat, ‘I pity the sorry state you live in. Not only are you trapped in the present also but have cursed yourself to see a future that will never come. You will never see tomorrow and may never savor the present. Yours is a fate worse than blindness.” They spat at his feet and he stepped back.
Shaking his head slowly, he stretched both hands to grasp each of the staves, the bulbs at their ends glowing white hot. As he turned to face them, three junior augurs gathered around the captive, two holding back their arms, another bracing their back and head.
He tisked as he stepped into place, crowd roaring.
They looked to the faces of the onlookers, many cheering, but some, just a few, crying.
They looked to the sky, and shut their eyes.
“We’ll just have to see about that, now won’t we?”
With deadly precision, the Herald thrust forward both pokers and pressed the searing hot metal into the captives shut eyelids. No power of will could counter its searing touch and they let out a soul-dashing scream. The skin of their eyelids blistered and retreated as the pokers dug in further. Molten hot liquid pooled from their eye sockets, leaving flaming trails down their cheeks.
The Herald pressed harder, till tissue gave way and metal hit bone. The captive, writhing against their grapplers, buckled, and wailed, sweat pouring onto the blood tinted tiles. As they gurgled and whimpered, the Herald bore a placid stare into them, twisting the metal, and searing the wound. As they convulsed and slackened their shoulders, He slowly withdrew the pokers, setting them to reheat in the furnace.
The junior augurs let go their grasp and the captive was released, collapsing forward.
They crumpled like a ragdoll with all strength leeched from their muscles. For a minute they barely breathed. They lay on the tiles as the watching crowd whispered and waited.
With an impatient foot, the Herald flipped them onto their back. The crowd rippled with gasps and cheers as their cauterized sockets pointed up at the cold night sky.
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Cover Photo by Ruben Ramirez
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