Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Chapter 42: Long Is the Night for the Godless, part XIII



   While all the people in Aremie-Valas' castle were busy with preparations
for the princess' wedding, the people in Viora's castle on the other end of
the highlands were busy for another reason.  In the outer ward of the
castle, a large wooden stage had been constructed.  It was fitted out with
many different instruments of torture and murder.  It made the people's
blood run cold just to look at them.  Simultaneously, the Vargranian
soldiers were busy capturing people.  Every day they returned with big
groups of naked women and girls in chains that were brought to the castle's
dungeon.  It was really crowded down there these days.

   The duchess Viora oversaw most of the works personally.  She lived up to
her reputation of not being afraid of getting her hands dirty.  Even on
this particularly cold and gloomy afternoon, she stood outside in the outer
ward and checked if everything was in order.  Most of the workers here were
conscripted.  The duchess' presence made quite an impression on them.  And
whenever Viora had the feeling that some workers were slacking off, she
didn't hesitate to order her soldiers to literally whip them on.

   Viora climbed onto the wooden stage and had a view over what had been
constructed so far.  After walking around for a while, she stopped in front
of a strange wooden apparatus.  It looked like a miniature guillotine.  It
obviously wasn't big enough to behead a woman.  Not even a little girl
would be able to put her head through this narrow machine.  The duchess
asked one of her sergeants.  "Say, what kind of instrument is this?" The
sergeant immediately stood at attention when she realized that her duchess
was talking to her.  "My duchess, this is a machine for cutting off a
convict's penis."

   Viora had never heard of such a thing.  She took a curious look at the
little steel blade in the machine.  No doubt, it was sharp as a razor.  She
looked at her sergeant.  "Is this kind of thing popular nowadays?" The
sergeant nodded.  "Yes, my duchess.  I heard that it is a common punishment
for infidels in High Heaven's kingdoms." That was all that Viora needed to
know.  While turning away, she said in a commanding voice: "If that's the
case, then make at least three of them.  And put them in a good spot so
that the priestess is sure to see them."

   This was quite an important time for Vargran castle.  Recently, it had
came to Viora's ears that a clerical delegation was to visit the castle and
inspect whether this remote place lived up to High Heaven's expectations.
The scope of such an event could hardly be estimated highly enough.  In the
best case, this could initiate the process of Vargran becoming a part of
the Holy Empire under High Heaven's rule.  On the other hand, in the worst
case it could lead to the decision that Vargran is a home of heathens that
has to be crushed by High Heavens.  Under such circumstances it was
understandable that Viora hardly found any sleep these days and oversaw the
preparations for the delegation's arrival down to the last detail.

   She wanted to show to this delegation that Vargran was a place where
heresy was not tolerated.  And what could express that fact more
convincingly than a mass execution?  If Vargran were to become a part of
the Holy Empire, a few hundred lives were a small price to pay.  Viora had
ordered her soldiers to capture anyone in the highlands who was under the
slightest suspicion to not believe in the goddesses of High Heavens
properly.  The duchess knew that there were many people in the highlands
who still had their hearts devoted to the old goddesses.  This was also a
good chance to get rid of them.

   A huge cattle was carried past Viora.  It was used to boil girls alive.
The soldiers made jokes about who of them wanted to take a bath in that
thing.  Viora nodded to herself.  Smoothly, everything went well so far...



   To be honest, Viora wouldn't have expected the delegation to be like
this.  First of all, she would've expected the priestess to be...  older.
The blond girl with the slightly annoyed and immensely arrogant look on her
face couldn't have been more than twenty years old.  During the ten minutes
that their conversation had lasted so far, this priestess of the name Laesa
had already told Viora that both her mother and her grandmother had been
high priestesses.  She openly bragged with her ancestry.  The other members
of the delegation were around the same age as Laesa.  More than an official
delegation, they looked to Viora more like a group of girls who traveled
around the world to have fun.  But they didn't seem to be particularly fond
of this place.

   "It's cold here, isn't it?" Laesa said reproachfully, as if it was
Viora's fault.  Viora put on a forced smile.  "Well...  It's natural at
this time of the year, I guess...  Can I offer you some tea, maybe?" The
priestess groaned.  She didn't hide her boredom and general disregard for
this place in the slightest.  "Yeah...  tea might be good." Of course,
Viora's staff was well prepared.  The tea was served almost instantly to
the priestess.  She didn't thank the maid who brought her the tea.  This
priestess really didn't look very pious to Viora.

   Laesa didn't take a sip from the tea cup she had been presented with. 
She just looked at it for a while, then shook her head and sighed.  Viora
had a bad feeling about this.  "Is something wrong with the tea, my
priestess?" Laesa looked at her arrogantly.  "The thing you gave me here is
yellow tea from Tarubea..." Viora nodded quickly.  "It is.  I assure you,
it is quite a delicacy." Laesa held the cup in her hand as if it was
poison. "However that may be...  This tea is not one of the things that the
goddesses have allowed us to drink.  Technically, drinking this tea is a
sin.  And so is offering me this tea."

   Viora gulped.  Her face grew pale and her hear beat faster as this
insolent person lectured her.  Viora had never heard of any laws on what
tea was allowed to drink.  But there were thousands of obscure laws that
some goddess in High Heavens had issued at some point.  No one could
possibly know all of them by heart.  Many of these laws were contradicting
each other or had been nullified or even reversed over time.  Viora
couldn't believe that she had made such a silly mistake.  She stumbled over
her own words as she tried to make up for it.  "I- I'm sorry, I never
knew...  I...  Can I offer you something else to drink?"

   Laesa let out an overly long and annoyed sigh.  "It's fine.  I have to
say that this place is really dull, though.  Why are there no children
here? Show me some girls that live in this castle." If the priestess
demanded it, Viora would provide, of course.  She ordered some maids to
bring their daughters.  A little later, some intimidated little girls stood
in the throne room.  Laesa looked at them with mild interest.  "You don't
have to be scared...  come closer." One of the girls approached her.  Her
mother had told her what an incredibly important person this was.  She
kneeled down in front of her without being asked.

   The priestess smiled at the girl.  "Can you tell me the names of the
three saints of the Vaner Rebellion?" Not only were there countlessly many
rules issued by High Heavens.  There was also an immense amount of
knowledge about the goddesses and saints that was expected to be known by a
true believer.  Laesa had chosen a particularly easy question that should
be answerable even by a child in this remote land.  But the girl just
looked at Laesa as if she had no idea what the priestess was talking about.
"The...  what rebellion?"

   Viora screwed up her face.  This really didn't go as planned.  She had
to show that such a thing was not acceptable in Vargran.  In a harsh tone,
she commanded a soldier.  "Let this ignorant child be undressed and
flogged. Then lock her up in the dungeon and flog her again on three
consecutive days.  Her parents who didn't properly teach her about the
saints shall both be thrown into jail." The little girl began crying as she
realized what she had done.  "I'm sorry...  I never heard of these
things... I'm not a bad girl!"

   Laesa coughed slightly.  "I'm afraid we can't let this girl off with
just a few whacks on her ass.  A believer who doesn't know the doctrine is
the same as a heretic.  Theni..." She was addressing the white-haired
swordswoman with the eyepatch who never left her side.  "Eyes and tongue."
Theni nodded and wordlessly drew a dagger.  Then she grabbed the child's
head and within a few heartbeats, she gouged both her eyes out and cut out
the girl's tongue.  The child fell down, screaming terribly and spitting a
big amount of blood onto the stone floor.

   The girl's mother who was also in the room wailed in agony.  "How is
this a fair punishment for a child?" Laesa gave her an annoyed look. 
"Actually, it was an act of mercy not to take your daughter's life.  I just
punished her tongue for not speaking the names of the saints and her eyes
for never reading about their lives." This priestess clearly had no idea
about common people's lives.  None of the maids were able to read, let
alone their children.  Laesa looked annoyed.  "Anyway.  Take this noisy
woman and her child away."

   Viora was sweating.  This didn't go well at all!  If she wanted this
visit to have a good ending, she really needed to go all out with the mass
execution that she would show Laesa.  She already regretted not capturing
more people to execute...

   Meanwhile, Laesa let the next child be brought to her.  After witnessing
what just had happened, the girl was scared shitless.  Literally, her whole
body was shaking.  Laesa tried to think of a really easy question to test
this girl's faith.  She didn't particularly enjoy punishing children.  The
way she saw it, she just did what was necessary.  "Let's see...  tell me
the name of the goddess who is said to have dark green wings." The girl's
knees were trembling uncontrollably.  She was so scared, she couldn't think
of anything.  And she had never heard of someone having green wings.  Piss
trickled down over her slender legs and tears ran over her face as she
answered.  "I...  I don't know..."

   Laesa sighed again.  What kind of place was this?  Had High Heavens
really sent her to a castle full of infidels?  It certainly didn't look
good for them.  And particularly not for this child.  "Theni.  Hands and
feet." Theni nodded, drew her dagger and got to work on the screaming
girl...



   Neyl sullenly looked out of the window of her tower room.  Down there,
the spectacle was in full swing.  Neyl had been invited to watch it as
well, but she had declined.  She could imagine better ways to spend her day
than to watch the cold-hearted torture and murder of Vargranian people. 
Still, she hadn't been able to escape it completely.  The screams from the
outer ward were way too loud for her to ignore them.  So she found herself
watching the mass execution from her windowsill.

   Quite a crowd had gathered to view the show.  The duchess had made it
clear that everyone was supposed to come and watch.  Including mothers with
their little children.  Of course, the duchess herself was watching too
from an elevated seat.  The priestess Laesa was right next to her.  In a
way, this whole killing was for her.  Sacrifices to soothe High Heavens'
wrath.  These were impure thoughts, Neyl reminded herself.  Still, she
couldn't help but having these thoughts when watching this insane
bloodshed.

   Whenever a dead body was carried off the stage, a new convict entered.
They ranged from five-year-old children to old women in their thirties.  No
one was spared.  The naked convicts were forced to walk onto the wooden
stage.  It was already completely drenched in blood.  The fear in the
convicts' eyes was absolute.  Many of them screamed and begged for mercy.
Some pissed themselves in fear when they saw the scene of carnage they had
to enter.  Among the convicted children, some even shat onto the wooden
stage in sheer panic.

   Before they were allowed to die, the convicts had to go through a
seemingly random selection of tortures.  The more sadistic members of
Vargran's army seemed to have had a lot of fun in designing and
constructing these torture devices.  To start it off, all of the convicts
had to undergo a thorough whipping on their backs and asses.  The heavy
whip cut deep wounds into their flesh.  After the whipping, salt was rubbed
into the cuts.  The screams of pain were beyond anything Neyl had ever
heard.  Many women lost their voice already during this early stage of
their torments.  A few even died of shock.  In view of what followed the
whipping, they could probably consider themselves lucky.

   There was one machine that was made for dealing with hands.  Ripping out
the fingernails and smashing the bone in every single phalanx.  Then
tearing out the whole finger.  When no more fingers were left, the whole
hand was crushed and then cut off.  Of course, there was a similar device
for dealing with feet.  Another machine skewered a woman's breast with
scorching hot barbs.  After repeating this process a few times, nothing but
bloody shreds were left of her tits.  Since it would have been boring to
perform this torture on children who didn't have any boobs to speak of yet,
they were spared this particular punishment.  But there were many others to
choose from.

   One that the soldiers seemed to enjoy using on children was the
so-called ass-ripper.  For this torture, a mechanic iron claw was applied
to each of the girl's butt cheeks.  Its grasp was stronger than the
resilience of the flesh itself.  While the soldier winded a crank, the
force with which the claw tugged at the ass cheeks grew stronger and
stronger.  If necessary, the soldier then made a few deep cuts into the
sides of the girl's ass with a butcher's knife.  Finally, the claws
completely ripped off both butt cheeks.  Needless to say, the whole floor
behind the ass-ripper was soaked with blood.

   There were still several other gruesome machines, including the
emasculation device and the cattle for boiling women that Viora had seen
recently.  Although she stood quite far away, Neyl could still notice the
stink that this massacre emitted.  It reeked of blood, sweat, piss and
feces.  Neyl could imagine that the smell would be a lot worse down there
in the audience.  It could be one of the reasons why she saw people in the
audience puking all the time.

   Those who didn't die during one of the tortures had their execution as
the grand finale.  There were several ways to choose from for a convict's
death.  Of course, hanging would have been too boring for an event of this
magnitude.  The traditional Vargranian art of sawing people in half head
over heels was much more preferable.  Others were even quartered by letting
a machine tug on each of their limbs.  The most extreme device cut the
victim literally into a hundred pieces.  It was a grid of razor-sharp
blades.  The naked woman was dropped onto it from a big height and was
hacked into small pieces by the metal grid.

   Neyl wondered why humans were always so eager to cause each other pain.
In this case, they did it because they thought that they goddesses expected
it of them.  Neyl wondered if that was even true.  She turned around and
looked at the portrait of Jin-La.  The ruler of High Heavens didn't look
like someone who cared about human beings at all.  To her, humans were
probably on the same level as ants and bugs were for Neyl.

   When someone suddenly knocked on her door, Neyl almost jumped.  She
usually didn't get any visitors.  Still trying to calm down, she rushed to
the door and opened it.  The girl who stood there was a member of
delegation that had came to the castle.  She didn't seem to be any older
than Neyl.  Her dark hair was gathered in one long braid that had a
surprisingly cute ribbon at its end.  What looked less cute was the thorny
black armor she wore on her torso.  It only covered the most important
zones and left both her bust and her ass basically bare.  Her arms were
heavily tattooed with pictures of saints.  On her belt, she wore the quiver
of a long sword.

   After the two young women had stared at each other for a while, Neyl's
visitor finally spoke up.  "I didn't see you down there in the crowd, so I
thought I'd visit you here..." Neyl had been introduced to this girl as
well as the rest of the delegation.  Her name was Beyul and she was a
genuine demon huntress.  Neyl forced herself to smile.  "Of course.  Come
in, please." Beyul stepped in and looked around.  Eventually, her eyes fell
on the picture of Jin-La.  Oh, if she knew how much sorrow this picture
caused Neyl...  "I like the way you decorate your room, Neyl.  You seem to
be very devout, is that true?"

   Neyl didn't like the way in which Beyul asked this question.  She
couldn't get rid of the impression that this girl was looking right through
her.  That Beyul knew that there was something wrong with Neyl's believes.
Neyl looked to the floor.  "I...  I hope so.  It is for the goddesses to
judge whether I'm worthy..." Beyul suddenly looked very serious.  "Oh, they
will judge.  They will judge all of us.  The sinners who are being executed
down there, they are just facing the first phase of their punishments. 
Once they've descended to hell, their torture will be eternal."

   Neyl gulped.  Usually, she tried her best not to think of hell.  But
Beyul was right, of course.  Eternal punishment in the fiery pits...  that
was probably the thing that also awaited Neyl herself.  For some reason,
Beyul put on a strange smile.  "Are you scared, Neyl?  You shouldn't be,
really..." Neyl looked up to her in surprise.  "But...  Isn't it normal? 
Isn't everybody scared of hell?" Beyul chuckled.  "All human beings are to
be judged, of course.  That's why they're scared.  What I say is that for
you, Neyl, there is no need to be scared.  Since hell is your home in the
first place, demonborne."