Author's note: I apologize for the delay in releasing the next chapter. What I initially intended to release is taking longer than expected to write, and real life takes up a lot of time. This is a small piece intended to tide everyone over for a bit while I get the other chapter where I want it. Enjoy.

From the Records of Posleshan

...Eight months ago, Ukhodnisl' received a command from us to fend off the hordes south of Beney Arabah, in the time that we, Posleshan, invitee as Prince of Beney Arabah, were in the great city of Holm-ir in order to exchange council with and pay tribute to our father, His Excellency the wise Prince of Holm-ir, Stareshan. Ukhodnisl's viceroyalty was to fight off the hordes who were entering our lands and bringing with them death and destruction and raiding our granaries and ravaging our women and killing our men and taking our children for their slaves.

Ukhodnisl' refused to carry out our commands. He failed, intentionally, in that he was to lead our men to glory and victory in the elimination of the horde menace, as we, Posleshan have done, and as our brothers have done before us, and our cousins have done before them, and as our father did before them, and as our grandfathers did before him, and as our great grandfathers have done, in the restoration of order in the plains.

Instead, the lieutenants of Ukhodnisl' tell us that he elected to consort with his mistresses, often for days at a time as the outlying villages and towns and settlements suffered the horde onslaught, as hundreds of the people died and were mutilated, when heavens have commanded and decreed that they be laid to eternal rest. When not carousing, the lieutenants tell us that Ukhodnisl' was to be found drinking much wine with his companions, such that over three weeks of destruction in the plains settlements, he and his companions consumed three barrels of wine. In all this time, Ukhodnisl' avoided and sent away without listening the repeated messengers from the settlements begging for the protection of the men of Beney Arabah from the rapacious and violent hordes.

Ukhodnisl's dereliction of duty and negligence could not be allowed to remain unpunished, as he needed to suffer as an example to others who may one day be in his place and in penance for the death and destruction and violation which he allowed carried out against our lands and people. As such, we ordered Ukhodnisl's punishment as follows.

The prisoner was made fast to a sturdy chair of iron and placed in a stone room to provide volume for the punishment to follow. The prisoner was gagged and his hands bound such that he could not manipulate. The prisoner was not made to keep his eyes open. In our directions and verdict to the prisoner, we stated that "though you may shield your eyes, you cannot avert your ears from the sounds and the cries which we condemn you to hear."

Ukhodnisl's family and friends were summoned too, and some were captured attempting to leave Beney Arabah, and there they were arrested, and made fast to several rows of benches fifteen arshins in front of the prisoner's seat, such that the prisoner could see his affiliates and offspring and womenfolk in the room. The directions were read to this group before Ukhodnisl', so he too could hear our orders, for this was among his punishments. The group was not to be gagged, for they were simply forbidden to cry out. Those who noised would be punished ahead of the others.

First, a friend of Ukhodnisl' was unbound from the bench and brought to the center of the room. There a barrel of wine retrieved from his home, like that from which he and Ukhodnisl' had drank copiously, was placed before him. His hands were bound behind his back and two guards held him fast as his face was submerged into the open barrel. After a minute, he was permitted to surface and gasp for air for several moments before being finally submerged into the wine for ten minutes, at which point bubbles ceased to disrupt the wine's surface and it was clear that he had died. His throat was slit and the corpse was rolled to Ukhodnisl's feet. Just as his fondness of this wine had killed the people of the land, so too had the wine killed his friend.

At this point, one of Ukhodnisl's consort, the sister of this most recently executed, began to shriek, as she had witnessed the execution of her brother. The guards unbound her from the bench and brought her forth into the space between the prisoner and the benches. There, a wooden bed was brought, and her arms were tied apart such that they angled back about six inches from the plane of her shoulder blades. Then, her three children by Ukhodnisl' were brought forth and each cut down in turn and slashed many times by a great sword captured from a fallen horde warrior. Their bodies were placed alongside their mother on the bed. Over the next several hours, the odd angle of her arms and torso reduced her to suffocation before her lover and alongside the bodies of their children. Just as the children and women of the settlements were cut down and violated by the horde invaders, so too did Ukhodnisl's children and women suffer.

At many times, the prisoner attempted to avert his gaze or close his eyes to evade responsibility for the suffering he had wrought upon his friends and his family and himself. Yet, as we had said, his ears could not be covered or averted, and we know that the prisoner heard clearly the struggle of his friend against his restraints, and the gulping breaths and burbling of the wine as his friend drowned, and the cries of his children as they were cut down with the cruelty of the horde, and the gasps of his mistress as she breathed her last breaths. In punishment for his negligence, he could hear and, when he did not shield his eyes, see, all that occurred to his folk and yet could not act, just as he refused to act for his charges in the oblast.

Another of Ukhodnisl's mistresses, along with her child by him, were then brought to the center of the room. They were made fast to the floor, then covered by rugs. Then a company of the men of Beney Arabah rode their horses back and forth many times, trampling them, just as the invaders trampled the people whom Ukhodnisl' refused to protect. Their bodies were placed at Ukhodnisl's feet.

Then another of Ukhodnisl's friends was brought forth. Just as the celebration and intoxication he encouraged had made Ukhodnisl' look away from the suffering in the towns and the villages and the settlements, he was made to look away. He was made fast to a tall wooden chair, and his shoulders fastened to the back of the chair by long iron nails driven through his shoulders and his shoulder blades, and his shoulders held by guards, and two guards turned his head about until it faced at an unnatural angle and he was certainly dead. His throat was slit and his body too was left besides the prisoner's feet.

Then the last four of the prisoner's children were brought forth and made fast to the floor there. And the guards brought many large boulders and placed the boulders atop them until they were crushed. Just as the children of the settlements who were taken into slavery were crushed by the labor forced upon them by the evil horde, Ukhodnisl's children were crushed. The boulders were removed and they were left out for their mother to see, for she was the next to be executed.

Because her beauty had distracted Ukhodnisl' from his service to us, her beauty was destroyed. She was brought forth and made fast to an iron chair so that her head could not move. Her hair was set aflame until there was almost none left, and those parts of her head no longer concealed by hair bore painful burns. Then her ears, nose, eyebrows, and lips were cut and torn off, and Ukhodnisl' was made to look upon his once-beautiful mistress as she squirmed in her pain and shame before her throat was slit and she too was left besides Ukhodnisl's feet.

Then, just as the dead of the villages had not had the dignity of a proper burial, the affiliates of Ukhodnisl' did not receive this privilege either. The hordes, wolves of the steppe, had mutilated and destroyed the bodies of those whom they had killed, and so we ordered a similar mutilation by wolves, so that the souls of Ukhodnisl's folk never knew peace. A pack of coyotes from the steppe were introduced, and before Ukhodnisl's feet, the bodies of his people and his women and his children were torn to shreds by these dogs.

The time had then come to punish the prisoner himself. In punishment for his false promises, the prisoner's tongue was torn out, so he could no longer speak lies and deception to us or to anyone else. In punishment for his willful ignorance of hearing the messengers' pleas, his left ear was cut off. In punishment for his inaction in the face of danger, his thumbs were removed by an axe so he could no longer act in any meaningful way. In punishment for his refusal to move from his place, the prisoner's toes were too removed by an axe, to ensure that he would never again move from his place as he had before, with such ease as he had had before. In punishment for his refusal to see clearly the damage done to the lands of the oblast, the prisoner's right eye was put out by a red-hot iron.

All these wounds were immediately cauterized by red hot metal, as we did not wish Ukhodnisl' to die by bleeding, for we did not wish him dead quite so easily or quickly. His final punishment was to live. He was to remain alive, considering every day the suffering he had brought on his family and his friends, by his abandonment of his duty to protect Beney Arabah in our stead.

We then ordered that the room be made his cell and Ukhodnisl' was left to stumble and hobble in this room, surrounded by the stains of blood and shreds of flesh that had once been his people. We commanded that there always be light in the room so that Ukhodnisl' might never sleep and so that he might always still see with his remaining eye the blood and tears staining the stones of his cell, and the shreds of cloth and burnt hair that had once decorated his womenfolk and offspring. After several months, the prisoner died...