“W-What?” The little boy worries that he has not heard the blonde woman correctly. Perhaps, what she was saying meant something else. Cariha is mistaken about his confusion. She wonders if the boy even understands the concept of death at his age.
“Do you comprehend death yet? Death… is a very special event in a person’s life. One that comes for all of us. One day you will die. One day I will die.”
Both of those days will end up being today, but I suppose there’s no point in you knowing that just yet.
Cariha continues.
“One day, even your mother will die. The death of a person can be thought of as… the person will disappear forever. You will never see them again. You will never be able to talk to them again. The only place that they will remain is in your memories. So, young man, I want you to consider… How would you live with her gone? How would you feel? Wouldn’t it be painful? Wouldn’t it be terrifying? Would… you like to find out today? Or will you do what I ask?”
Cariha looks at the boy with a worried look. He looks away from her unsettling face.
The beastkin child is very conflicted now. His parents had already explained to him the concept of death when his great grandmother had died. He had not been closer with her so he didn’t understand its significance. He had not tried to learn about it in detail.
Perhaps this was the first time that he had comprehended that death was not a rare thing. It was something that did happen to everyone, just like his father had told him. One day in his life, he would die. Although, he couldn’t picture himself dying of old age. His mother is still here. He was unable to picture her dying either.
But, this woman is saying that she will no longer be there. That she controls whether his mother lives or dies.
His heart starts racing. He doesn’t know what he can do. His mother is telling him not to do what the woman asked. Yet, she could be gone forever if he decides to disobey her. He can only wonder to himself if his mother even understands that she could leave him forever. That she could leave his father forever. Why would she still ask him to let her die?
Cariha sees the boy in inner turmoil. She signals to the two men standing beside the boy's mother.
The two men pick the woman up by her shoulders and bring her to her child’s right side. He turns his head slightly to see her face. He knows that expression. His mother is telling him not to listen to the woman. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t. If he obeys his mother, she will die. She either knows that or she has her own plan. If she knows something he doesn’t, he should trust her, not the stranger.
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He simply doesn’t consider the nature of the vials he is asked to drink. Luckily however, he reasons to himself that he should obey his mother and not this stranger.
The young boy refuses to speak any further. Cariha realizes she has miscalculated. The boy still trusts his demihuman whore mother more than a reasonable human woman like her. She can only feel sorry for him, while unaware of her own madness and inability to relate to the race that she perceives as wretched and inferior.
Still, she’s having fun toying with the demihuman child’s feelings so she doesn’t mind the delays. It just gives her more opportunities to exact her cruelty.
“That is such a shame, young man.” The beastkin mother is brought closer to Cariha by her henchmen. She comes face to face with the woman.
She holds the woman’s face with her left hand, squishing her cheeks.
“You know… your mother is very beautiful.” Cariha considers the demihuman woman just slightly more attractive than her. She gestures to a female member near the boy to gag him again. What she’s about to do might make him scream involuntarily, simply out of reflex.
Such a pretty face. A shame.
Cariha takes a knife out from under her dress skirt from a dagger holster on her thigh. The boy tries to shout and scream in panic, but the gag is preventing his voice from reaching far. The human woman slowly places the tip of the knife on the middle of her forehead. She then pricks the woman’s skin with the tip of her knife.
She then fluidly moves her knife in a zigzag pattern across the woman’s face. She doesn’t really care what the pattern looks like. She just wants to ensure that the woman knows that her face has been disfigured.
“Do you feel that, whore? You’re not bleeding.” Cariha speaks harshly, her words biting at the beastkin woman. She feels no need to speak nicely to the woman, even if she was nice to her son.
The woman screams behind her gag at her skin being cut. After the knife stops moving and leaves her face, being placed back into its holster, she realizes that the cut is burning, as if her forehead is being drenched with acid.
The boy can see his mother’s face. Her forehead now has a wound that is not bleeding or even red. Rather, it is a greenish-brown cut. Cariha whispers to the woman.
“This is a special knife, you know? If you’re cut by it, you don’t bleed. Instead, the skin it touches and cuts through decays. A wound like the one I have given you cannot be easily healed by a mage. You’d need to remove most of the skin on your forehead first, maybe even the pieces of your skull that my blade scratched.”
Though, I doubt vermin like you would be able to afford healing like that in the first place.
Cariha puts on a smile when facing the boy again.
“Now, young man, I think you’re old enough to make your own decisions! You want to save your mother, right? You want to prevent her from feeling pain, right? Well, I’m giving you a new choice now. I am going to keep wounding your mother…”
Cariha cuts the beastkin woman again, this time on her cheek. A small cut, in comparison to the cut on her forehead, and just like the wound on her face, it does not bleed.