“Please… end… Please…”

Amo stumbled to a stop, staring up at the hideous, pitiable thing stretched across the road above them. It hung on a rack of bone and ligament, a strange shape of stretched, stitched, layered meat and cloth worn by ribs and skull and throbbing, dripping organs inside. It wheezed, shivered, wailed, and begged. Red dawnlight shone its bloodshot eyes, casting shadows through the gaps in its bones. Amo stared, then nausea welled up in them and they staggered against a wall to the side to vomit.

On their knees, Amo shivered, cold. For the first time since they’d left Pharaul and traveled north, they felt the cold of utter exposure. So ugly, so unthinkably ugly, the sight, that their body shivered with illness. But they strained their wrists against the cutting manacles that held their hands behind their back, and the pain brought them back.

“Please!” The body above them wheezed. “Please! Please!”

Amo got themself back up. “I’m sorry. I can’t stop.” They ducked their head and ran beneath the tormented being, hurrying onward.

* * *

“My god!” Nymir paled, gawping up at the figure above the street. All around him, garrison soldiers murmured. Some prayed. Some lost their breakfast in the gutter.

“End… please…” The pitiful thing moaned.

“I saw.” Someone was saying, a woman from a half-open doorway nearby. “A person in black. I heard shouting. Someone else ran away, but the person in black lifted this man up and then started to… I don’t understand… Horrible magic.”

The northlander with the leather shroud over half his face stepped toward the woman’s doorway. “This person you saw, they were wearing black? Where did they go?”

“Kept on. Around that corner, I think. Do you know what…?”

“This is a crime of Southlander spies, ma’am. Don’t worry. They aren’t getting away from us. Stay inside. This’ll be over by midmorning. I promise a public execution.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The woman closed the door.

The leather-shrouded man took a crossbow from the hip of one of the soldiers and put a bolt through the tortured creature’s head. As its shivering and begging stopped, as the throbbing organs inside of its bones went still, the man gave the crossbow back to the soldier he’d taken it from. “You stay here and get this person down. Shroud them and take them to the crematorium. Have them burned immediately. The rest of us will keep going.”

Nymir backed away, shaking his head. “Amo, what the fuck? What the fuck?”

A heavy hand fell on Nymir’s back, grabbed him, dragged him forward beneath the hanging corpse. The leather-shrouded man said, “You’re coming with us, southlander. I promised that woman a public execution, and you’ll be my executioner. If you hesitate at all, I’ll give the people your head, too.”

* * *

Amo found the sign to the Maniaque, the gleaming black paint on black wood, almost invisible the shadows. They leaned against the door, felt its warmth, and saw the rising dawnlight. They remembered Sethian’s Skin’s rule: One can only enter and exit the Maniaque at night. Still, Amo pressed against the door and begged, “Please open. Please don’t be too late.”

The door did open, albeit with a reluctant hum of magic. It was as if the Maniaque were saying, Just this one time. Next time you’re out of luck. Snow blew out of the building, but Amo was still so cold with disgust that they barely noticed the chill in the air. They almost fled straight into the building, but there was another rule: You must never bring any kind of metal, stone, wood, or earth into the Maniaque. The rule that had supposedly led to Phaeduin’s death.

Standing in front of the open doorway, Amo strained against the metal shackles on their wrists. “Shit.” They looked around but were at a loss. They tried backing against the metal girding beneath the Manique’s sign, hooking the manacles on it and pulling hard, but nothing gave. It was just futile pain, metal cutting into their wrists. The door tried to swing slowly shut, and Amo kicked it back open, hissing breathlessly, “No, wait. Just another minute. I’ll figure it out.”

“Amo!” Nymir’s angry voice shook through the shadowed street. “Amo, you demented fuck! You thought you’d get away? What kind of magic have you been hiding from us?”

Spinning, Amo watched Nymir charging at them with a northlander blade in his hand. Behind him, soldiers of the Watch garrison followed, all swords and dull gray armor under green tunics.

Spitting a tumble of curses, Amo staggered back into the Maniaque’s doorway, then said to the building, “Please don’t kill me!” and ran inside. They kicked the door shut behind them.

But before the door could latch, Nymir’s body slammed into it. The door flew open and Nymir ran into the Maniaque, armored soldiers at his back.