TRIGGER WARNING

This chapter contains explicit scenes of mental and physical torture

4 Years Prior

DAY 1

Gwen Pivot sold magically infused cooking oil. She worked in a small shop in Roarhaven. The kind with wall-sized shelfs of different infused ingredients for cooking, with planters in every available corner. The store was owned by a friendly Lady that looked aged for a mage; grey hair and laughter lines.

At least, Gwen used to work there. That was, until she had been kidnapped and dragged into this dungeon. She puckered her lips, closing her nostrils off from the smell. It was partly the human waste, which sat in the dark corners of stone wall and stone floor. The air was thick with the water that everyone around was sweating and drooling out. Mostly of all, it was the stench of burnt flesh and old blood that made Gwen want to gag, every time she became aware of it.

She much preferred the scent of soap and dried herbs in the shop.

"I sell magically infused cooking oil," Gwen said.

"Well, isn't that something," Skulduggery Pleasant replied, "and how, exactly, does magic infuse this oil?"

"I mean, technically, it's the herbs we work with," she admitted, "they're treated and, then, go into the oil and soak. In the end, the oil contains only the remnants of that magic from the herbs. So, it's all really safe."

"Is the magic even part of the oil, or does it stick to the herbs?" He challenged, adjusting the arms cuffed behind his back.

"To be honest?" Gwen pondered. "I actually don't know. I only sell it. But our customers are very happy."

"What is it supposed to do for you, cooking with this oil?"

"Oh, all kinds of stuff!" Gwen excitedly proclaimed. Glad to have found a topic to finally talk about, she begun listing, "they can make certain dishes taste better… make you feel warm or more energized… help you focus, or sleep… Some people even put it in their tea."

"Please…" One of the torsos whimpered. "Please…"

Gwen cleared her throat to tune out the sound. "You should try one, once we get out of here."

"I cannot try your oil," he said. "I'm a skeleton."

She nodded slowly, once. "Right." An idea made her face light up. "You could give it to someone else as a gift, though."

Pleasant did not reply to that.

In any other case, Gwen would have accepted his lack of interest but she was currently doing her best to speak over the noise of tortured souls, in here, and around them, behind thick walls. Some of them were screaming, some of them were moaning, some were crying, some were muttering to themselves, there was any kind of painful sound in between and beyond.

Gwen did not like looking at them. It made her throat close up. Yet, once in a while, she glanced at one of them. The people with stumps as legs and arms; burnt flesh and exposed bone at every end. Some of them still had parts of their limbs, many of them had only the head and torso left. All of them were blind. Their eyes had been taken out, their noses and mouths cut away, leaving gaps that bled and crusted over. Drool ran down their exposed gums, down their cheeks, and necks, and dropped thickly onto the hard ground. They were barely even human anymore just… torsos.

They might have been too weak to do anything other than sit around and mutter. Or maybe, they were being drugged. Not many of them talked. The ones that did asked to die.

That was the worst part. The begging.

The same torso tried his luck once again, as he did every couple of minutes, once someone started or stopped talking. "Please… kill me…"

Gwen realized that she had grown numb to it. She wondered if that was shock. She wondered, how long shock lasted. She hoped, it was long. Before shock, she had been mostly sobbing and panicking. Pleasant had tried to calm her down; it had taken a while.

"How about, as a thank-you-gift, for whoever gets us out of here?" Gwen suggested after shaking her head to get rid of the thoughts. "I'll even wrap it up for you."

Pleasant turned his skull a bit in her direction. "Gwen, was it?"

She tried a smile. "Yeah."

"Gwen, I hate to disappoint you. But there is no one coming to rescue us."

She frowned. "What? What about Valkyrie Cain?"

He looked back ahead, at the only empty wall. "Valkyrie Cain is not in Ireland. And she won't be, for a presumably long time."

Gwen thoughtfully looked at the ceiling, where the humidity was gathering and dripping down in thick blobs. "What about… Dexter Vex?"

"Dexter Vex and Tanith Low are on adventures, distracting themselves with adrenaline kicks. They aren't checking on their phones, let alone on me."

"What about Grand Mage Sorrows?"

"They have my phone. If she does contact me for work-related reasons, I'm sure they will make sure she believes that I am busy. Or avoiding her. Or moping."

Gwen's eyes followed a droplet down on its way to the stone floor, where it splashed into a tiny puddle. it looked like a transparent ink blob. She did not hear it, however, over the whimpering of eight pruned people.

"Please, make it stop," asked another torso. "I don't want to go back."

This one still had the upper half of his thighs and his shoulders. But he would not for long. She did not know how most of them were still alive. It was all a fairly clean process, she guessed. Once in a while, they even came to hose down the floor.

"I'm sorry, my friend, but if you still had your eyes, you would see that we both are tied up and unable to help you," Pleasant said.

He tried this, once in a while; replying to the torsos. Even if one or the other even replied with something other than an explicit death wish, it never really went anywhere, and Gwen was starting to assume that he was just doing it for the sake of his own conscious, at this point.

Gwen did not reply to them. She knew, there was no use. And she felt, she would probably, and very suddenly, throw up, if she even attempted it.

"I beg of you," the torso sobbed.

Pleasant sighed quietly.

This was how they spent their hours. Listening to the weeps and moans, to the begging, half of the time. Watching them be tortured, the other half. One after another, they tied them up on a metal table and started slicing and drilling.

The face. Slice by slice, eye by eye, tooth by tooth, nose, lips…

Then, the body. Fingers and toes first. With a surgical clipper. Three clicks. Each knuckle its own click. Then, the feet and the hands. With a scalpel; four slices. The wrists and lower arms with a knife and an electrical saw. Six slices. The elbows and knees carved out separately. Then, the upper arms and thighs. Only three slices; the bone was thicker, there, harder to cut through. And after each one, cauterization.

They would watch. Quietly, as blood poured and then boiled at the touch of the cauterizer. Listen to the screams and sobs and cries for help and begs for mercy. Watch them lose their bodies piece by piece, until they were just… torsos.

"Mr. Pleasant?" Gwen said.

This time, he looked at her directly. "We have been locked in this dungeon, watching and listening to people getting tortured, for almost twenty-two hours now. I believe, that should be enough for a first-name-basis relationship, don't you think?"

She sniffed humorlessly at his phrasing. "Fine. So, Skulduggery?"

"Yes?"

She stated it more, than she asked him. "We're all here because of you, aren't we."

His gaze remained on her face. She tried her best to return the look at empty eyeholes.

"Yes." Skulduggery replied.

Gwen nodded. "Thought so."

They did not talk any more, for the rest of the day.

DAY 2

Gwen let a couple of strands of brown hair hang in front of her eyes. Her hair was not very long; barely reached over her shoulders so, that was not an easy task. It was greasy. It had some dried puke in it, from when she had thrown up from the drugs that they had used to kidnap her.

"You look wonderful," Skulduggery suddenly said.

She frowned at him. "What?"

"Out of all of the people around here, I look the most fashionable. But you undoubtably have the best hair."

"Uhm… thanks?"

"Please… I want to die," a torso commented.

The heavy metal door opened and Dìlis Ferrum strolled in. He was wearing the same excited yet calm smile he always had, during his little visits. The smile of a man that had been waiting for this for a long time and so, he could wait a little longer.

What he was waiting for, Gwen had no idea.

Behind him, two of their other hostage-takers. Ferrum seemed to be the leader here. A Cleric, probably. But they all wore the same hooded, black robes over black clothes. Underneath the hood, distinctive faces were hidden; one of them had a large nose, and the other one had angular features and a veiny neck and muscular arms. Maybe, they wanted to conceal their identities. Or maybe, it had to do with their cult.

Gwen did not know what that cult was, or what they wanted from her or Pleasant. But they seemed to be some sort of sect of the Irish Necromancer community. She wondered if community was a fitting word for what she was witnessing here.

It seemed, a part of the Irish Temple had split off to pray to… something. Probably, the Death Bringer, Gwen decided; it always had to do with the Death Bringer, when it came to Necromancers.

Ferrum had his hood down around his neck, revealing a head of straw-brown hair, and a well-kempt goatee around a triangular chin.

The muscular one was carrying something like a metal box or, maybe, a small podium, Gwen could not quite make out what it was, in the gloomy light.

Ferrum looked around contently, mustering each of the eight torsos as he passed them along the wall. They had set them up at perfectly even distances to one another; sat on the ground, chained against the wall by whatever parts of their bodies still remained. Some of them had parts of legs and arms left, which had been tightly wrapped in chains, some had them lying around their midsections or necks. But even if they had not been chained up, the torsos would go nowhere, anyway.

Around them, the Necromancers had decorated the walls with the slices of their body parts. Parted toes, pieces of arms and legs that looked like raw, rotten porkchops; arranged in unfamiliar and seemingly random patterns.

Four on the wall to their left, four on the right, Gwen and Skulduggery chained to the center of the wall between them, also sitting on the ground.

Ferrum stopped before them and gave a slight bow to Skulduggery. "Always an honor."

"If it's such an honor," he replied, "how about you undo me? And Gwen here too, while you're at it."

Ferrum chuckled. "Now, now. Not so fast. We both know, I am just being polite here. I bow in honor of the person you are, not the person you are pretending to be."

Skulduggery looked as unimpressed as a skeleton could. "And let me guess: Making me listen to the torture and begging is supposed to want to make me help these poor fellers here, with the sweet release of death?"

Many of the torsos started muttering and talking immediately.

"You already understand, I see. That's wonderful," Ferrum replied cheerfully. "Means, I don't need to explain much. I am happy to tell you; that is not all."

"Happy day."

"I have something for you. Something that might look familiar," he continued and waved his hand.

One of the Necromancers reached underneath his robe and unveiled a separate skull.

The stronger one moved closer and placed the metal-box-thing before them. Gwen could now clearly see that it was some sort of socket, made from heavy iron, shaped to a low podium, decorated with tiny skulls edged into the metal.

"This is the skull of the honorable Priest McMan."

Skulduggery snorted.

Ferrum paused. "Is something funny?"

"Ah, no, nothing in here is even remotely funny. Other than your pesky little names and your pesky little cult, maybe."

He smiled knowingly and went on to completely ignore Skulduggery's attempt at disruption. "Priest McMan was a very powerful mage. He held the ability to feed magic to other Necromancers. And he believed that a young Necromancer that was trained in the Temple, who chooses another discipline, is not only a grave loss to the Temple but a traitor to the Death Bringer himself. You commit to the Temple; you commit your soul forever."

"And so, you brought him over here, to scold me?" Skulduggery guessed.

"Your jokes have no use in here, Detective." Ferrum smiled. "They will only make this process harder and, most of all, last longer."

His jaw opened, but the Cleric was already onto his next sentence. "McMan offered up his body to be used in creating a Surge Trapper. I am sure you know what that is?" He asked.

"I do."

"I don't," Gwen said and looked at Skulduggery. "What's a Surge Trapper?"

He leaned her way slightly, speaking at lower volume, as if he was giving her a quick side-info. It made her feel special, somehow. "As the name suggests, it traps a mage that is experiencing their Surge in a specific magic discipline, traditionally Necromancy. Essentially, forcing them to become Necromancers, even if their Surge might have brought on another discipline. This technique was used frequently in Temples, during and before Mevolent's war, but has since been banned as an inhumane practice."

"See there. He is like a living library," Ferrum contently praised.

"I usually go by living skeleton," Skulduggery said to him, raising his voice to the usual level again.

"Yes, and how wonderful is that? A dead man wielding death. Perfectly suited to carry and wear the most exquisite channeling object in all of history. Directly touching the source of infinite power, alike a god. And yet…" Ferrum sighed sadly, "here he sits, in a shirt and pants, whining."

"I wasn't whining, and I was wearing a wonderful cobalt-blue three-piece and a brand-new hat earlier, until you took those from me." Skulduggery retorted.

Ferrus snorted disbelievingly. "The Death Bringer is described as the most valuable General. The most brilliant strategist and most devoted to the meaningful. As never talking, except if need be. Except if his words were useful enough. Except if the one listening was smart enough. He wouldn't even bother phrasing a sentence that as irrelevant and hollow as the one you have just spoken."

Skulduggery tilted his head and now he almost looked sorry for the man. "I hate to ruin your whole… thing, Dìlis. But the Death Bringer has not existed in centuries. This, here, is who I am and who I want to be. And neither those sorry people, nor your pretentious little copycat there…" he said, nodding to the torsos and then McMan's skull, "is not going to change any of that."

"You keep telling yourself that, Pleasant," Ferrum grinned.

He lifted a hand and snapped his fingers. The strong Necromancer came over and started tying Skulduggery's boney wrists and ankles with thick rope and metal shackles, additional to the ones they had already put on days ago. The Necromancer with the large nose lit a candle on the podium and sat the skull on top of it. It looked like a macabre tealight.

In the meantime, Gwen leaned over to Skulduggery. "Why do they think you're the Death Bringer?" She murmured.

There was no reply so, she leaned back again.

The Necromancer undid the original shackles and it almost looked like Skulduggery relaxed, when he removed them. Gwen assumed those had been magic-binding, like hers. She hated the feeling of wearing them. This was, fortunately, her first time and, hopefully, her last.

"You are now able to use your magic," Ferrum explained to Skulduggery, "but not your Elemental magic. It is blocked, as it would be during a Trapped Surge."

"If you believe trapping me in using Necromancy will simply make me…"

"Oh, I wasn't done," he interrupted and clapped his hands once, loudly.

Another Necromancer opened the door and joined them inside. He was dragging a young woman behind him, who must have been about Gwen's age, in her twenties. She had blonde hair and a small face, and she still had all of her limbs. She was crying, sobbing like a little girl. Gwen felt sorry for her.

The new guy's face was quite boring, not as recognizable as the others, from what she could see from underneath his hood. Yet, his expression was discernibly one of cold distaste.

"Please," the woman forced out between whistling sobs. "I don't… want to die."

"Wonderful," Skulduggery said with flat irony, "a change of pace."

"Now, here is the problem with disciplines and True Names…" Ferrum said, walked around the crying woman, and stroked along her shoulder line with his index finger as if he was examining a piece of meat for the festive roast. "You cannot simply force someone's True Name to accept a kind of magic. It will always choose what it wants. And, deep down, that is what the mage wants. You chose a discipline, because you are made for it and because you want it."

He retracted his finger and the fourth Necromancer forced the woman to stand closer to the two mages that were chained to the ground. Horrified, her eyes flicked back and forth between the skull on the podium and the skull on Skulduggery's shoulders. She looked confused and scared. Gwen assumed, she was probably a mortal.

She would have loved to ask. But before either of them could say anything, the Necromancer that was holding the blonde girl raised a blade up to her throat. The woman froze and kept sobbing, but without moving so much.

Ferrum crouched down on the ground before them, his eyes stuck to Skulduggery with a mixture of fascination and disappointment. "See, when we saw you unleash your might onto Darquesse, when we saw your transformation… We realized, Lord Vile isn't gone. He is being suppressed. He is being held down and locked away, until he's called for your dirty work. Like some… gopher." He spit out the word with distaste.

Gwen wanted to be shocked, but not much shocked her anymore, in here. The world was numb. The world was indifference. She lamely went through a couple of memories of what she knew of Lord Vile, to make sure she was sure she was not shocked. But, nope, she was just glad to finally know, what she was doing here.

"I decide what work he does, because he is me. Which means, me decides. Got it?" Skulduggery replied irritably and mustered him. "Also, you might want to wear your channeling objects, next time you undo my shackles."

Ferrum ignored him. "You know, I watched Vandameer Craven and Solomom Wreath scramble to create their own, personal Death Bringers, with their experiments. And while everyone else was debating who was right or wrong, I was waiting for their pathetic dream to die."

Any humor had gone from Skulduggery's voice. "How is this any different from what Craven did to Melancholia?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter how I do it. It matters who I do it with. They were never going to create the Death Bringer. Because he was standing by and watching, just as I was." A sleezy smirk fell over Ferrum's face.

"We have nothing in common," Skulduggery hissed.

Ferrum just lowered his head and his voice slightly in hissed tones. "You have told yourself; you don't want this. You don't want to succumb. Is that it? You don't want to give in? To the power. To the satisfaction. To the relief of death. You tell yourself this is you. This costumed, smooth-talking fountain of chitchat. But it isn't. And you aren't. Deep down, you want the power. Because that is what every Necromancer wants. That is what everyone wants. And that is what you are meant to do… And so, what we will do today, is to remind you of that."

He got up again swiftly and tapped on McMan's skull. "Here's what's so special about a Surge Trapper. It doesn't simply make you stick to Necromancy. It makes you want it."

Skulduggery merely watched him quietly so, Ferrum lifted his hand at the man tgat was holding the blonde woman. She screamed terribly and then gurgled, as her throat was cut.

Necromancy seeped out of the cut along with blood, blubbering in smokey waves. They seemed to be pulled towards them. McMan's skull was attracting the shadows, was making them curl around it and then, disappear inside.

Suddenly, Skulduggery's entire body recoiled backwards. His skull inclined tensely and his sights stuck to the skull in front of him

"See? There it is," Ferrum said happily, extending a grabbing hand at the air. "Do you feel that? That draw? Is it calling to you? Do you want to reach out for it?"

The dead woman was dragged out by her armpits, and the door fell shut again.

Gwen noticed that the flame on the candle had gone out. However, on second sight, it seemed the skull was only filled with shadows so that she couldn't make out the light.

"This is the truth behind all that genius, isn't it? It's nothing more than an elaborate scheme of ignorance and denial. Of tricking yourself into playing the good guy. And you have gone so far that, now, the subsequent issue appears to be," Ferrum sighed. "You shouldn't be moving away from it. You should be moving towards it."

Skulduggery grabbed his own shackles behind his back and held on to them. His shoulders went down slowly but he seemed no less tense, as he silently stared at the Surge Trapper.

"You touch this, and all of the power is yours. You don't, and we will just keep bringing you offerings. Death per death, we will feed it with magic, make it irresistible. What do you think of that, Lord Pleasant?

Still no word from Skulduggery. Gwen was starting to worry.

A wide grin spread over Ferrum's slim face. "Looks, like we have a plan."

DAY 3

Skulduggery had stayed like that, the entire remaining day and the night.

At least, that was what Gwen believed the time to be that had gone by. But they had no windows, only slim vents cut into stone, and a singular light bulb that dangled off the ceiling on its wire. Previously, Skulduggery had always been able to tell her the approximate time. But he did not talk much anymore.

Gwen had managed to get some sleep. When she had gone to sleep, Skulduggery had not yet moved, and when she had woken up, he had changed his position slightly, and was staring at the ground, instead of the skull. Yet, he still held on to the shackles in his back; bent fingers severely digging into the metal.

They had come in, sometimes to torture but, most of the time, to kill more people. They would beg for their lives to be saved, while the torsos would beg to be saved by death. A girl, then a boy, then a girl, and so on. All mortals, all young, all pretty… the deranged fantasy of it made Gwen want to puke again.

And all of their death-energies, or whatever she was supposed to call it, were sucked into McMan's skull. And every time that happened, Skulduggery's bare, bone fingers dug deeper into the gaps between the chain links. Sometimes, she thought to hear them scratch or crack on the metal.

Gwen had no concept of what how he must be feeling, right now. Maybe, like a starving man that was staring at a piece of steak. Or a blood-thirsty mass murderer that was staring at death. But then, Gwen had no concept of what either of those felt like, anyway. She did not feel like considering it any further than that. It was the kind of thing she let people like Valkyrie Cain deal with.

Gwen was just the girl with the cooking oils.

But other than that constant urge to throw up the lacking contents of her belly, Gwen still felt numb. The sounds of suffering people were muffled. Her eyes were watching through fog. It was good.

It took her a while to realize that Skulduggery was shivering. She did not know why it took her so long. Maybe, because she expected a shaking skeleton to sound more… clattery…

Like the stereotypical sound-effect that any animated kids' movie or toy sound box used to depict a moving skeleton. She could hear it chattering in her head.

But Skulduggery was silent. Dead silent. Unmoving. Staring at the other skull. Fingers bent unnaturally. Some of them broken. And Gwen would have thought he was actually dead, if there had not been that shiver.

DAY 4

Gwen guessed it was the fifth day in the dungeon. But then it could have been the night before the fifth… Or maybe it had already been a month and she had no concept of time, anymore.

Going to the toilet in a bucket was not as embarrassing anymore. The dirty water and bland food started tasting better. The smell had disappeared from her nose pallet. In summary, sitting in a dungeon with eight torsos and a skeleton could have been worse.

Well, seven. One had gotten an infection. His death unexpectedly snapping into McMan's skull had made Skulduggery moan and squirm, physically pushing himself back against the wall with his leg, staying as far away from it as he could. And yet, forced to stay in perfect reach of it at all times.

No, actually. It could not have been worse. It was the worst thing Gwen could imagine. In fact, it was the worst thing above what she could have ever imagined. And still, she was numb. Maybe, she had just shut off. People did that, right? They disappeared into their mind caves? Thought of better places with the people they loved?

Gwen did not feel like doing that. She wanted to just sit there, staring with Skulduggery.

He was not doing quite so dandy. Now, when Ferrum or one of his men killed another person and the Necromancy in the skull became denser, Skulduggery moaned in rage and pain, almost sounding like he was gasping for air, although he had no lungs. And every time, it took him longer to calm down, afterwards. Yet, he always did, eventually.

"Why don't you just touch the thing and get us out of here?" Gwen asked, between one of the sacrifice killings and the next torture session.

"Because I won't just kill people who want or deserve it," Skulduggery replied. His voice was low and deep. His sights were set straight ahead on the skull, frozen and unmoving, and had been so for, presumably, several hours. It was starting to creep her out a little. "There is no telling how many."

"Would you kill me?"

"Yes."

"Hm," Gwen made. "That's really too bad."

"They're bound to get what they want, eventually." He said, pausing for a second, then continuing on. "If not for some…" Another pause, then the last word faded out, as if speaking had exhausted him. "...Miracle…"

"Do you need anything? Should I talk about something?" She suggested.

"You would anyway, even if I said no, wouldn't you?" Skulduggery muttered.

Gwen frowned. "What do you mean? I'm not that chatty."

"Ah, you're one of those."

"I don't get it," She said confusedly.

He tilted his skull at her, as if he had a new, interesting piece of information for her. "You should know, you might not be real."

Her frowned deepened further. "Are you going crazy, or something?"

Skulduggery sniffed in a way that it sounded like a gasp. "Probably."

They came in. Two of them. The muscly-looking one and the one with the big nose. Gwen wanted to cut the ugly thing off and put it on the skull as a replacement. They didn't have a sacrifice person with them and they didn't pay attention to the torsos. They went straight for Skulduggery.

"No," he said immediately, but they didn't pay attention to that either.

The fit Necromancer walked around and started taking off the shackles. Skulduggery held on to them, tried to wiggle him off, but there was no use, and the chains were pulled from his grip. A couple of his injured finger bones snapped, some of them got stuck in the chain links and were ripped out, and they clattered to the ground next to him. Some of the knuckles even got stuck in the chain, and Gwen watched them leave, as the Necromancer dragged it out of the room.

Suddenly, Skulduggery jumped up, went straight past McMan's skull, and jumped the other guy. He tackled him with his shoulder, and they crashed into the torso-free wall where the torturing was usually happening.

And he had been right, the Necromancer did not have a channeling object, because he punched Skulduggery, who just took the hit with no reaction and punched back. His big nose cracked and Skulduggery's remaining boney fingers grabbed his hood and the hair underneath, and smacked it violently against the wall.

The hood fell off, as the Necromancer's eyes rolled back, and his head lulled into his neck. But he remained standing, up against the wall, and Skulduggery turned, just in time to see the sledgehammer that was swinging at his skull.

It hit his head and the bone cracked like thunder underneath the dull sound of impact. He tumbled backwards and collapsed. The Necromancer that had recently returned laid the sledgehammer over his shoulders and kicked Skulduggery in the ribs, making some of them crack too

After that, the two men simply turned around, walked out, closed the heavy metal door, and dampened the sound of screaming people in the other dungeons around.

Skulduggery groaned and curled up a bit, lying there, defeated. After a little while, he slowly stirred; little propping movements, until he was up on his elbows.

"You can do it," Gwen tried, even sounded relatively convinced.

Skulduggery did not reply but got on his knees, then one knee, then to his feet. He stumbled lightly at the couple of steps towards her and then, dropped back down to the floor next to her. With an exhale of empty breath, he pulled one knee up, resting an arm on it and his head in his palm. The other one held on to his own leg. The shiver was worse, a heavy tremble now, and he no longer stayed still and quiet, gasps moving his body, his hands and feet helplessly adjusting their grips at intervals.

Gwen shifted sideways towards him, her chains clanked, as she moved her hands in her back to prop herself up. She couldn't complain, since the exercise was a welcome stretch to her stationary muscles. Eventually, she made it close enough to relax and hold her arms out and over to him behind their backs.

Skulduggery looked back feebly at them, before slowly reaching back to grab her shackles and hold on to them again.

"Thank you," he muttered tiredly.

Gwen put her head on Skulduggery's shoulder. The bones were not making it comfortable, ground into her cheek, as he contorted lightly under the pain. But then, nothing here was comfortable so, she stared ahead at Priest McMan's skull and waited for the next round of whatever was coming.

DAY 5

They undid Gwen's shackles. But they did not leave afterwards.

Quietly, she let them pull her up and lead her to the wall. When they rolled in the torture table, she jerked back and two hard hands grabbed her arms, keeping her in place.

"No," Gwen said, as the veil of shock lifted and, suddenly, she could feel the terror of what was coming. "no, no, no…"

"Leave her alone," Skulduggery practically growled at them.

"She is an offering. Like everyone else here," said the Necromancer with the big nose. It was swollen and bruised underneath his hood. That would have cheered Gwen up, if she were not dreading the horrors to come.

"I don't want... your offerings," he forced out. "She has nothing to do with this."

"This is your problem," said Bathory.

Gwen whimpered. Fingers tightened harder around her arms.

Evelyn Bathory walked into the dungeon. Gwen knew this one's name, because she usually introduced herself to her torture victims before going to work on them for the first time. But this was the first time she had addressed either of them.

Bathory gestured to the table and Gwen cried out, when the two other Necromancers dragged her to it. They threw her onto it, back to cold metal, and tied up her arms and legs.

Bathory picked up an electrical bone saw and ran her fingers over the blade to test the sharpness, as she did every time. Her dark brown hair was tied to a professional bun. She was pretty, and her voice was nice and smooth, liked to fill the room between the screaming. "Your attachments. Your attachments to people, and to material things. To things that you consider parts of life. There is no life for you, out there, my Lord. You are dead and so, death is what you are."

The men drew the blood-soaked leather bindings tight around Gwen's wrists and ankles.

And Skulduggery argued a bit more but his arguments became flatter, and his voice grew tired, and then he fell quiet, as Gwen started screaming.

Fingers and toes first. With a surgical clipper. Three clicks. Each knuckle its own click. Then, the feet and the hands with a scalpel; four slices. The wrists and lower arms with knife and an electrical saw. Six slices. The elbows and knees carved out separately. Then the upper arms and thighs. Three slices; the bone was thicker, there, harder to cut through.

Loud.

Loud with the drill humming and scratching and screaming. Loud with Gwen's screaming. Hot. Sizzling right by her ear, at her shoulder.

And when they had taken her nose and lips, showing her the left-overs of her face in a bloody mirror. When she felt the tendril of her eye nerve rip from her brain and then again, on the other side. When there was no more left to her, no limbs, no light, just pain. Then, she understood. She understood the torsos. She finally understood.

And Gwen knew, when she started begging for death, that he would be there to free her.

Dìlis Ferrum coughed up blood and gurgled out a chuckle, showing bloody teeth with a grin. There he was, before him, armor swirling in perfect shadow.

Lord Vile had killed Bathory first. Then, he had moved on to the other three Necromancers, making their blood freeze and slicing their skin off with flexible shadow blades that moved over their bodies like silky meat-cutting fabric. Ferrum could see the rage in his movements, the style that made it, most of all, an act of brutal hate. Beautiful.

Next, the Death Bringer had cut into Ferrum, but had left him to lie there in a pool of his own organs and watch him free the seven tortured mortals around. He killed them quickly and precisely, shadows jabbing straight into heads and chests, some of them exploding skulls, some of them cutting sideways over throats.

Ferrum and his men had studied his style carefully, based on stories and literature about him and his teachers, had planned it out as best as they could. The months of research, and planning, and blood spatter analysis had paid off.

The heads that had exploded had left chunky blobs on the wall behind, the chests and necks spewed out thick blood that sprayed and poured everywhere.

And the drops and lines of blood on the walls connected to the pieces of meat of the people that were nailed to the wall. And it connected them with each other and with the torsos in their midst. And the symmetry of the room, and the patterns of blood and flesh painted a mosaic of death onto the innards of the dungeon.

Lord Vile paused and turned in a circle, looked at the gruesome art, and Ferrum's grin widened. He seemed to appreciate it.

Then, Vile turned around to the girl on the table. He walked up to her, and the corners of the gap that was her mouth went up, her eyeless gaze met his, and it seemed like she was smiling at him.

"Thank you," she whispered, as air whistled through her exposed gums.

Vile barely hesitated before grabbing her throat and squeezing lightly, making her neck snap with ease. She was dead, immediately. Lord Vile let go of her. And started stumbling backwards.

Ferrum's grin faded.

His helmet started shaking side-to-side. He looked like he was getting rid of something swirling around his head.

"My Lord," Ferrum coughed. "Do not weaken."

Vile grabbed his helmet and he seemed to struggle for a second but then, he opened a latch and ripped it off.

Pleasant gasped and then groaned with past exhaustion, threw the helmet on the floor, moving backwards from it still, hands frantically opening the other latches on the armor.

"It's too late…" The sentence ended in a gurgle.

Pleasant turned to him. He was still wearing most of the armor pieces. He seemed to hesitate for some reason. Seemed uncertain of what to do. He looked at the bloody art on the dungeon walls again.

"We did it," Ferrum gurgled. "You can see it. I know… I know you do. You see the good… the beauty of it… even… now…"

He knew he was right, when Pleasant stormed towards him, the rage obvious in his stride. Ferrum grinned again, breathing out at the feeling of accomplishment. He opened his arms, accepting it, taking in the moment. And death opened its arms to him.

Are you in love as much as I am?

My lust wants us to be forever

And so, she sings a song and another song

For that we live forever

Is it this what you want?

Is it this what you love?

Are you a good little soldier that claps on the beat? He?

Are you entertained? He!?

Long live death!

Long, long live death!

Our daily bread

Everything's already seen, everything's already familiar

Everything's already undergone - entertain us, go!

Jump through the burning ring

Dance on hot irons, show us his teeth, yeah, lead him in a circle!

Knock on the window, before he falls asleep!

It's not allowed - no! No! No!

Oh, so much I laughed, but only at a distance

Pictures were taken, was so close to the monster

So marvelous, bread and circus for the masses! Yeah!

Are you in love as much as I am?

My lust wants us to be forever

And so, she sings a song and another song

For that we live forever

Let the dogs go! Release the dogs!

I want to see how they beg, they shall bleed, let's go!

We paid for that; we have a good reason to be here!

Paid good money, damnit, put a bullet in his head already!

Sweet drinks, nuts, chips

Top-notch-view, cinema seat, want to see it splashing onto the lens!

Throwing roses down from the highest ranks

We are deadly eager

Long live death!

Long, long, long, long live death!

Our daily bread

Long live death!

Long, long, long, long live death!

Are you in love as much as I am?

My lust wants us to be forever

And so, she sings a song and another song

For that we live forever

Are you as gleeful as I am?

Oh, how sweet the lies that live gives to us today

And how my heart almost burns down for love

Look, how spring blossoms today

Da Da Da Da…

- "Lang lebe der Tod" (transl.), Casper, Blixa Bargeld, Dagobert, Sizarr (2017)