"Just a woods wench, Your Highness, nothing more." The deep voice from the man wearing the dog's helm barks, his voice vibrating within the confounds of ash-colored metal covering his face.
Prince Joffrey snarls down at Viola still standing proudly before the hearth, the water pale still clutched in her hands. Her eyes follow The Hound as he lifts his visor to free his face. The sun glinting off of his armor, combined with the shadow of the remaining helm make it impossible to make out his face or any of it's features. The Hound takes a step back from the opened doorway, shakes his head, and stalks away. Prince Joffrey takes The Hounds departure as an invitation to enter the small cottage, where he turns his nose up at every corner, chuckling to himself.
"Payne!" The Prince shouts from over his shoulder. "Come in here and see what The Hound and I have found."
A third man appears in the doorway, his face stern and emotionless, as though made of stone. He leans against the doorway as his eyes roam the room before settling on her and narrowing his brow.
"I have nothing here to offer you." Viola stammers, her heart pounding in her chest.
"I am the Prince!" The boy bellows. "You will address me as such, or I will have your tongue!"
"I have nothing here to offer you, my prince." Viola corrects herself through clenched teeth as her knuckles begin to whiten due to clutching the pale tightly in her fists. She inches sideways as slowly as she dared, towards the knife situated on the wooden counter top where she had been about to peel acorns and slice some cheese a few moments prior.
"Are you simple minded?" The Prince chuckles. "Ser Payne, is this bitch simple minded?"
Payne, as Prince Joffrey had addressed the third man, raises a single shoulder, emotionless, and allows it to fall just as quickly, an apparent indication of conversation to someone who knew him. Viola's eyes dart between the prince, the silent man, and the knife glinting in the sunlight from the open door, calling to her like a beacon.
Ser Payne catches on to her plight without hesitation, and with one hand on his sword still sheathed in its belt, strides towards her quickly. Viola throws the pale at his head with a grunt and rushes towards the door, but it is no use. The moment the pale makes impact with the stern, silent mans head, he has her around the waist, lifting her feet from the ground, and dragging her back from whence she came.
Viola thrashes and kicks in his arms, snarls her teeth, attempts to claw at the mans face, and even kicks the prince in the stomach in the process. For her efforts, she is slammed hard against the stone floor, her head bouncing on impact and causing her eyes, and ears, to go fuzzy and the room to spin. Hands are on her now, tearing her clothes and pinning her to the ground, but the fight has not yet left her. She kicks and bucks on the ground, making contact with anything near enough for her feet and knees to reach, until suddenly she is punched in the mouth and slammed back against the cold, unforgiving floor.
"I'll have your head for that, you bitch!" She hears who she assumes to be the prince bellow as a boot makes contact with her stomach.
Viola uses every remaining ounce of fight within her to rear back and spit a glob of blood, along with the tooth that had been knocked out with the punch into the silent man's face. She watches with a snarl as the blood slides down his face and drips from his chin. He unsheathes his sword just as her hands lurch forward in an attempt to wrap them around the mans throat, and watches in the swords reflective steel as the tips of her first two fingers on her left hand fall to the floor. She lets out a howl of agony and attempts to clutch her hand to her chest when Payne drops his sword to the floor and pins her hands above her head.
"Enough." A second, deeper voice booms from somewhere behind her. "We should return to the Inn, let the cunt die here on her own."
"No." The prince cackles and turns towards the towering figure in the doorway. "I was meant to see blood, and that wolf bitch took it from me! I will see a head removed today!"
"The butchers boy is dead, is that not enough blood for one day, Your Highness?"
"No, it is not! That little bitch cut me, and I wanted her head, but Father would not allow it. Now he will be forced to take another, because this little whore has gone and kicked me!"
"Aye." The huge man replies. "Looks as though she got what she asked for well enough."
The Hound gestures down at Viola pinned to the floor beneath Payne, then at the blood still dripping from his chin. The sun reflecting off of The Hound's armor in the doorway causes her to squint. She tries to squirm from her captors embrace but is promptly shoved back to the ground and a knee is placed onto her stomach to hold her down. She had still not been able to see the massive man's face, but could tell plainly from his body that he were no one to mess with, and imagined a deep, permanent scowl etched upon it. If The Mountain was bigger than him, she no longer wished to see him in person.
"I will say when she has had enough." The prince snarls as he stalks towards The Hound, one finger pointed at him in defiance. "And I say, I want to see this bitches head roll, and I want that wolf bitch to watch on while I have my wine. Do you understand me, Dog?"
"You'd best take her to you His Majesty The King then, boy." The man grunts down at the prince.
The prince chuckles and stalks around the room, all while Viola remains pinned to the floor, struggling within Payne's grasp. He smells of shit and vomit, and his breath is far worse. From the corner of her eye, she watches as Prince Joffrey eyes a log smoldering halfway out of the hearth, apparently kicked out in the struggle. He glares up at The Hound, grasps the fallen log, roughly the width of her own wrist, with one end blazing with fire, and stalks back towards her.
Without breaking eye contact with The Hound, Prince Joffrey presses the burning log onto the right side of her face. Payne holds her firmly against the ground as she thrashes and screams, then lodges his knee deeper into her stomach until the only sound that can escape her lips is a deep, hollow moan.
The pain is unimaginable, worse than the time she accidentally touched the end of a skillet as it cooled on the hearth. It is all consuming, red hot, angry, and bone deep. The sounds coming from her throat feel foreign to her ears; sounds that should not come from a human mouth. The worst of it, the true bit of agony, is smelling her flesh cook as the prince rolled the smoldering log from the corner of her lip and towards her ear, taking care to burn every inch of her right cheek, jawline, and even the lobe of her ear.
Perhaps she blacks out, she cant seem to remember, because all of a sudden, she is doused with scalding hot water while she writhes and screams upon the floor, now free from the man holding her down. The air is heavy with the scent of cooked flesh- her own cooked flesh, burnt hair, and smoldering fabric. Her chest, neck, shoulder, and stomach are burning as she scrambles to pull the clothing from her body to alleviate the pain, all while the agony of the burnt muscles in her face cause her breath to be stolen from her.
Viola tumbles to her feet, her legs weak and uncoordinated, but eventually, she makes it. The prince and Payne are nowhere to be seen inside of the cottage, but The Hound remains stationed at the door, his large body acting as a barricade. As though a woman possessed, Viola begins hastily picking up fallen objects, righting a stool knocked over in the process, all while tripping over her own feet and likely making a larger mess than there had been before she began attempting to straighten the place.
"P—p—please, Ser. Don't…don't let me father find my body." Viola begs as she tumbles around the small kitchen, desperate to get away from the pain wracking her body, desperate for the man to hear her. "Please—please don't let him find me. I'm all he has, I'm all he's got. Please don't let him be the one to find my body."
Behind The Hound, just beyond the front of the cottage, Alna's figure comes in to view. Viola attempts to scream for her to run, she tries to tell her to please just go, but all the only sound that comes from her throat is an ear shattering screech as she watches her head tumble to the ground with a soft thump as Payne's long sword makes contact with her neck.
"She came right at me, Ser Payne had no choice. You saw it, you saw her run right at me, right, Dog?" Were the last words Viola heard as the world goes dark as her knees buckle and her body falls back down upon the floor.
—
"Mother!" Viola calls as her mother turns and leaves her lying on the cold floor, sobbing and in pain. "Mummy, please!"
Her mother turns and looks down at her, her face is blue and swollen, her eyes pure white and blind. She smiles, wicked and terrifying down at her daughter, blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth, and reaches out to stroke a strand of hair from Viola's raw, ravaged face. Then she turns, without a word, and leaves her alone again.
Next comes Alna, her head swinging at her side as she clutches it by the hair on the back of her own head. Viola is nearly eye level with it as blood drips down onto the floor, her hands struggle to find purchase to pull herself up as the blood pools beneath Alna's severed head. She smiles at Viola, winks, and offers her a hand. Viola accepts Alna's outstretched free hand and allows her to pull her from the ground.
"You're going to come with us, now." Alna instructs her as she pulls her towards a clearing that she hadn't noticed before.
"But Father, I can't leave Father." Viola tries to object, but with each step she takes, the pain becomes a bit more bearable until she is nearly running to escape it.
"Oh, don't worry, he's just over there." Alna points off into the distance, and smiles up at Viola as she looks down at her head bouncing at Alna's side as the two sprint towards the clearing.
True enough, there was Father, standing in the clearing with his hands upon his hips, waiting for them. As she nears, he reaches a hand towards her. Viola stop suddenly, something wasn't right. He motions her to come closer, and instinctively, she does, until she notices the slit in his throat from one ear to the other. She lets out a devastating scream and falls to her knees in the dirt.
"We've given her milk of the poppy." An unfamiliar voice calls from the darkness surrounding her. "Yet she still screams. She likely will not be long for this world."
"Good." A feminine voice replies as Viola drifts back in to darkness.