!Warning: M (16+)-rated themes: Depiction of torture.

- XXXIV -

Tanis loved watching executions. Maybe this was one of the reasons he had never considered himself a good monk during his mortal life. He didn't like to inflict pain on others himself, though. Torture and dispatch were a sordid business and he hated to dirty his hands. The dust of old parchment was the only filth the scholar was used to and he intended to keep it that way, but being an innocent bystander to such a spectacle brought some delightful distraction into his desk work.

And so Tanis climbed the stairs to the old observatory of Castle Corvinus, a room with a dome that could be opened skywards via some advanced machinery. Oh, he really would have liked to study that brilliant mechanism, but he hadn't found anything about it in Marcus's library.

Pity, he thought to himself, while he entered the hall and mingled with the crowd of vampires who were already waiting for the show to begin.

The three Elders were sitting on a podium, Viktor in the middle, Amelia to his right, Marcus to his left. The warlord had decided to drop all charges against Corvinus, for after their fight in Amelia's rooms, the original vampire hadn't made any further attempts to flee his quarters. Quite the contrary: he had behaved almost as meek as a lamb. Now Viktor trusted him enough to set him free again and grant him the amusement of watching the punishment of the four servants. Of course, he hoped Marcus would learn the same lesson the future guards would learn: From now on they would do their work properly, for their life depended on it.

Marcus tried to keep his expression neutral, when the two men were led into the room. The formerly proud guards in shining silver armour were now naked, their pale skin dirty, their beards scrubby. Hunched over, they seemed like their muscles were becoming atrophied, like they hadn't fed for days. Blue marks, only slowly healing, were visible on their chests and shoulders.

Amelia unemotionally watched her former maids being dragged through the door of the observatory. Like the guards they had been stripped, their hair was completely matted, and they showed the first signs of starvation. Small, still bleeding wounds were scattered all over their bodies.

When the two women and two men were standing in front of the Elders, their heads lowered, four torturers in simple leather clothes positioned themselves behind them, made them kneel, and tied them to iron rings which were inserted into the floor.

"I will not repeat the details of your crimes," Viktor addressed the convicts in a lordly and dispraising tone. "You and everyone else here know why you were sentenced to death."

"Disloyalty and neglectfulness are misdoings that we, the Elders, will not tolerate," Amelia agreed with him, her voice sounding ice cold.

Viktor then nodded in the torturers' direction. "You may begin."

They immediately followed their lord's order, pulling whips – cats-o'-nine-tails with horribly sharp iron claws – from their belts. The sounds that soon followed were as bloodcurdling as the looks of the torturers' instruments.

Amelia didn't feel the urge to avert her eyes like back then when she first had watched a punishment like this in Viktor's courtyard in Moldavia. She was used to such cruelties now and convinced that they were necessary to keep order among their people. Her lover had encouraged her to think that way only hours before.

Most spectators jeered and catcalled, rooting for the leather-clothed men, and only a few people focussed their gazes on the floor, embarrassed.

When the convicts' backs had been torn to shreds, rivulets of dark, immortal blood streaming to the stone floor, Viktor snapped his fingers and the torturers stopped their gruesome work.

"You saw what happens to everybody who dares to commit an act of disloyalty," the warlord spoke more to the audience than to the condemned servants who, in complete agony, were no longer able to grasp the meaning of his words. "Now you'll witness the punishment that befalls guards not keeping watch and maids overlooking their lady's needs."

Accompanied by an excited murmuring from the crowd, the torturers now stepped in front of their victims, grabbed them by the hair to force their heads up, then plunged the blades of small daggers into their eye-sockets. With a precise cut and leverage action, eyeball after eyeball popped out of the convicts' skulls, disgusting smacking sounds mixing with desperate howling.

Andreas Tanis observed the cruel spectacle with both excitement and disquiet. He hadn't expected such an enormity of torture before the execution took place. Unintentionally, his right hand reached into the pocket of his cloak for a piece of papyrus. The scholar's eyes never left the bloody scene before him, while he fumbled for the carbon in his belt pouch. He began to write a few headwords about what he saw and heard, but stopped abruptly when he felt an intense stare settling on his back. Tanis turned his head to meet the cobalt eyes of Marcus, who was still seated on the podium and watched him from above.

"Milord..." The former monk bowed, his gaze flickering between his paper and the Elder.

He felt like he had been caught in the act of committing some wrongdoing, something that would cause him to be the torturers' next victim. But Marcus beckoned him over in a benevolent gesture.

"Go on, write down everything you see," the original vampire said. "For posterity."

He didn't specify why he wanted this event to be recorded. As a warning for future servants? Or as evidence of Viktor's cruelty? Tanis couldn't tell, but he nodded and turned back to the atrocious show, taking notes.

After the leather-clad men had collected eight eyeballs, they presented them to the Elders. Excited silence spread in the observatory. Would they be ordered to kill the condemned?

"Now you all know the penalty for neglectfulness..." Viktor's regal voice could be heard.

The warlord then addressed the convicts directly again. "Do you think your punishment is over? Do you think you can die yet?" he asked.

There was no answer but miserable wailing.

"Continue," Viktor instructed the torturers.

They worked together now, two of them forcing the whimpering women's mouths open, while the others produced huge tongs and began to tear out the teeth – one by one, each of them like a shimmering white gem in the torchlight. Agonised, high-pitched shrieks echoed from the walls and the ceiling of the domed hall.

They dealt with the male convicts in the same way. After they had torn exactly one hundred and twenty eight teeth, including sixteen fangs, the torturers let go of them, all four now lying motionless on the floor.

Viktor had observed Marcus from time to time. He had kept a straight face, never displaying any emotion.

"I assume this is done now," Corvinus eventually said and stood up.

Without another word or glance at anyone he stepped from the podium and left the room.

Marcus's stiff retirement made Viktor chuckle.

"Our ineloquent friend is right." He turned to Amelia, whose emerald eyes left the gruesome scene to meet his. "Morning is near, my love. We should go to bed."

The female Elder nodded and stood up, too.

"Let's end this," she ordered.

Tanis had expected the torturers to slip into the role of executioners now and behead what was left of the convicts, but to his surprise, they left the room. And the Elders and the crowd followed them through the door.

For a moment he stood there, bewildered, until a soldier addressed him.

"Hey, you, scribe! You better get out of here. Sun's rising and we'll open the roof now."

Appalled, the scholar hurried for the exit. When he descended the stairs he could hear the door closing behind him and the cracking and creaking of some iron gears, followed by the most bloodcurdling screams that had ever reached his ears. Then, complete silence.