Week 23: The Hunt Begins

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“The Rack”, what an understatement. Of course Josaiya knew its fearsome reputation, but the name, oh god, that misleading name was the worst part of it all. When they had stopped flaying the flesh off what used to be his right hand and told him they were moving him to the rack next, he thought it a welcome relief. At first it was very uncomfortable, being bound hand and foot to this strange table with rollers, but what is discomfort next to flaying? Then the stretching came, stretching like Josaiya had never known. He could feel the slow dislocation of every joint from his wrists to ankles. He could feel the edge of the table brush his fingertips, then his knuckles, then the back of his hand, and finally his wrist. The worst of it wasn't the candles burning under his arms, or the rough pliers that ripped out his toe and finger nails. It wasn't the hooks through his ribs that scratched his skin from the inside, or the spikes that lined his spine. It had been the popping noises of bones slipping out of sockets and of cartilage snapping. If by some miracle of the gods he was freed from the rack, he would never walk again. Never use his arms, never hold anything in his hands. He'd gained a few inches in height, but he was ruined forever.
Josaiya snapped out of his self pitying daydream at the sound of keys in locks. The door creaked open and a woman stepped in, not his usual jailor -  the scrawny, ugly brute of a man named Fich. By the light of the torch she carried he could make out her features: Soft red and brown hair pulled back in a loose bun with a few wavy strands falling about her fair and all but bare shoulders. A loose, pleated, green, V shaped summer-dress which hung elegantly from her shoulders and tied just below her humble bust with a gold and green belt before finally coming together at her navel and falling to her calves. Golden jewelry glinted in the wavering torch light at her ears, neck, bicep and forearm, and gave a soft jingling sound to her otherwise silent descent. It wasn't until she was sat beside him that Josaiya noticed the soft freckles on her cheeks or her sea green eyes.
“There, there” she said gently, wringing out a wet rag from the bucket at her feet and wiping the sweat from his brow. “Fich can be so… eager to do his work that sometimes he goes too far. It really wasn’t necessary. I know you haven’t seen the babe, it’s Ok.”
His heart raced a thousand beats per minute. Everything about this woman soothed him, relaxed him, made him feel safe, she was the goddess Martha in the flesh; but still, his heart raced. Something in the back of his mind, some part of him he couldn't put his finger on squealed the softest of squeals, “Something is not right”. She smiled, kissed his cheek and ruffled his hair before going to work on his bindings. The rush of adrenalin when his first arm was finally loosened after days on the rack was punctuated by... pain? relief?  The intensity of the feeling overwhelmed whatever was at the heart of it. Bit by bit, she undid his bindings until he was a broken man laying on a table of spikes.
“Now tell me, Josaiya is it?”
He nodded.
“Surely you must have seen them. The old man, the armored soldiers, the dwarf, and the silent lady with them. Just tell me what you saw” she said soothingly as she stroked his hairless chest, “and we’ll put this all behind us.”
“Really m’lady, I ‘vn’t seem them. Honest.”
The woman in green and gold took a moment to consider him, her gently smiling face drawing his attention. Then pain, not long and breaking like the rack, but swift and sharp like when you cut yourself shaving. She dropped something warm and wet onto his abdomen, the liquid rolling off his side. His eyes welled as she took his head in her arms, and rested it against against her bosom, running her fingers through his hair slowly, lighting up his scalp with sensation wherever her nails went. 
“Well, if you really don’t kn-” she was cut off by the throwing open of the dungeon door.
“Lady Felicity,” said an eager voice at the door. “The Othos brothers are dead, and Lea is missing. Their bodies were found at a ford south of Tarnwood.”
For the first time Josaiya saw the black bone dagger that had gelded him. He saw it raise up high, and he saw it descend”.
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