12th of Ymiden 720
The mantle of iron maile, reddened with rust and blood marks rested over Woe's bare shoulders. The damned thing made him uncomfortable, and he didn't think he would get used to it. Yet his host had insisted that it was all part of the games, of the proceedings.
Upon entering Quacia, Woe was swift about looking for work. There were precious enough things he was qualified to do that were of economic value. He was no tradesman, by any stretch of the imagination. He'd done some smithwork in Yaralon, sweeping the local forge in Withersfield and nailing fences. And that was where his manual labor experience began and ended. Yet he was still young, capable, in at the height of his fitness.
So after some cursory investigation, he found that torturers actually ran a thriving trade in this city. And not just as removers of flesh. There were all manner of judicial appointments that called for knowledge of pain. How to make men scream, bleed, or how to break them. Woe was skilled at most methods of breaking men, most of all mentally, but physical torture wasn't foreign to him either.
He didn't have the reputation here nor the citizenship required to gain an official appointment as any kind of judge. But there were independant contractors, carnifexes and torturers who had occasions to be called upon. With the number of executions going on, hands were on short supply.
So Woe donned the costume, the maile mantle that looked brittle enough that it would sooner crumble beneath an axe blade before stopping it. Woe wore an iron mask for his upper face, as well as a maile cowl that was to be worn with the mantle. It itched his bare skin terribly, but at least hid the scars on his back, that marked him as either a former slave, outlaw, or pervert.
But then, maybe Woe was all three of those things now? Far be it for him to fly from the truth! He moved in tandem with his new master, down to the square. It was an old dilapidated neighborhood, half run down where the Shanty ran up against the Gleam. The wooden planks of the stage were watered with the blood of former 'players'.
The act of execution and torture was not only a formality, something to scare others into submission. To enforce the social compact that held everything together. It was a chance for relief, for charnel gratitification of the masses. It was blood sport and opera. It's purpose for judicial or theocratic enforcement, were all wrapped up into a singular spectacle. A revel to tease out the passions, horror, and hidden perversions of the witnesses.
Here, the carnifex was to be as much an actor as a representative of the law. He'd seen his new mentor caper about, jesting and teasing the condemned before submitting him or her to his mercy. Woe didn't know if he had it in him to become that sort of carnifex, yet he could appreciate the artistry of his mentor. The expressive ministrations that he used to set the plate, before burning, scourging, or bleeding the condemned.
Woe and his mentor arrived before long. Wearing only the maile mantle, masks, and baggy black pants and boots of a Quacian executioner. Woe stood solemn nearby. His hands wrapped around the hilt of a borrowed executioner sword, it's tip resting against the planks of the scaffolding. There, he waited for his mentor's instruction.
The master carnifex held out his hand to Woe, and accepted the wicked scourge from him. From there, the master went into his routine, capering around and feigning to abuse the condemned.
The condemned, a man and woman, were adulterers. There was no explicit law against adultery in Quacian law, whether secular or theocratic. Yet, laws of theft were remarkably open to interpretation. What belonged to a Heap was of little consequence, one could steal from those in the dregs with impunity. Shy of stealing anything of great value, one could get away with quite a lot before drawing the eye of the law. Not so when it came to a noble, even landless, manufactured nobility. The woman's husband was such a one, and his belongings, she included, were considered sacrosanct, inviolate.
Worse than theft, though, it was treason to conspire against the Kingdom. The nobility, even those upjumped and landlesss men who came by it through luck or favor aligned with the Kingdom. As such, their interests and possessions were by extension those of the Monarch. Their nobility flowed from the Monarch. The Monarch was absolute in his rights and authority. The social order needed upholding. Woe's role here was to see the sentence fulfilled to completion.
The man and woman were dressed in the best clothing available to them. It was unlike the methods of humiliation Woe had seen commited by Rynmere justice. Where in Rynmere they'd dress the accused in rags, the Quacians liked to festoon their judicial victims in the finest cloth. Afterall, it was no accident that they were performing the execution in the Shanty outskirts, before the eyes of all Heaps. Where the Heaps could watch one of their own who had abandoned them to marry a noble. All dressed in her finest clothing gifted by that noble husband. It gave them a release, to see one brought high dragged down to their level, dressed in finest silks, chiffon. Red velvet and cloth of silver flattered her natural good looks and charms.
The man was dressed in his finest suit, which wasn't much. The master had had to loan him a few articles. The carnifexes that held these events had props and disposable cloth for just such purposes. It wasn't convincing to anyone with the slightest ability to appraise cloth. But to the Heaps, who couldn't tell tweed from velvet, it was enough to see him as not one of their own.
The master had gone through his practiced dance and routine, and turned to nod to Woe, wordlessly giving the signal. Woe came forward. The sentence called for the woman's punishment to come first, and her death last. The husband wished for her suffering to be the central display. And that was suitable. Had the man bedded anyone other than a noble's wife, he might not have ended on the scaffold.
Woe lifted the executioner sword, and touched the back of the woman's neck. Cold iron grazed goose flesh as it trailed down the skin, severing the laces and fabric that kept the cloth on her back. She lifted her bound hands to preserve her modesty, and choked on a sob as the top of the dress began to fall forward, with the sword having torn the back of it.
Once more, Woe laid the tip of the sword against the plank on the scaffolding. With a moment's concentration, he recalled the shape of a rune of touch. The ether coursing through him brought him very nearly to ecstasy. Although his Hone spark was a mere fledgling, his other sparks had swiftly coalesced to uplift it. They treated Hone as if it were their newborn monarch. Although his Empathy spark roared with might and power, it thought nothing of uplifting this rival stain on its host's soul.
Within a few bits, the rune was drawn across the woman's back, and then replicated on her neck.
Then Woe stepped aside, and let his master take to the woman with the scourge, against her bare shoulders and back.
Her screams tore throughout the courtyard, driving the audience to a frenzy. Every ragged cry, every choked breath that died in her throat revealed the crowd for the mass of fallen humanity that they were. The mingling perversions of a society driven to decadence and decay were on full display. Quacia was a society of carrion living in of the bones of a greater civilization. Rarely was it more evident than when they were in the throes of a carnifex' revel.
The man struggled against his bonds, as he watched his lover suffer the lash of the scourge. Her back torn to bloody ribbons that flowed down the silks of her skirt. She was kneeling on the scaffolding by that point, the strength stolen from her, yet the rune of touch ensured that she would not miss a single sensation.
The master nodded to Woe, and so the torturer assumed his position. He held the executioner blade over his head, and then brought it down to the man's neck, without cutting. He was trying to commit to muscle memory the path his sword would take.
A few more practice swings, and without much warning Woe brought the blade down on the back of the adulterer's neck. It didn't go through all the way, and the man let out a horrific scream. Woe did not panic, however. He merely kicked the man to the ground, pinning him there with a foot. Once he had him still, he took another few swings, finally severing the man's head with the fourth swing.
The woman, the Heap turned noblewoman stared through melting eyeliner, that dripped down her face like blackened tears. She watched her lover perish.
Woe was tempted to taste that despair. His spark wished to taste the delicious emotions, but he held it back in reserve. He couldn't afford to overstep in his first executioner's duty.
The master held out the scourge to Woe. Woe took it from him, exchanging the sword.
With a swift and expert cut, the carnifex beheaded their client from behind.
The crowd was in a frenzy at this point, and all wanted to touch, to taste, to experience the blood leaking out from the scaffolding. They groped and grasped at the corpse of the man and woman.
But now it was time for the master carnifex and his assistant, the torturer to leave the stage. Their role fulfilled. Meanwhile, the magistrate would step forward to deal with the aftermath.
