If one of the child's parents is a magician, the child will be a mage too. No exceptions to this rule. The baby also inherits the color of hair and eyes of his ancestral god.

At first Xavier Nocturne was happy about it. It guaranteed that his child would be strong and that the family will flourish.

But on the day his son was born, he was in Metarit, guarding it, so he was among the first to find out about Citadelorous' betrayal.

On his way home he prayed for his child to not be a magician, for him to be an ordinary kid instead of becoming a blue-haired target like himself.

But there were no mistakes this time. His son had sapphire-blue hair and eyes, which meant that his life was not going to be easy.

Xavier even thought about making his son wear wigs all his life, but he quickly abandoned this idea. Everybody knew that children always inherit their ancestral god's features. Nobody would buy that.

For the last five years the Nocturne family was being pressed from all sides. The same happened with the other descendants of the traitor god.

Now everything was harder if your family had a blue-haired mage in it. Some even preferred banishing those and not having magicians at all, which always led to a massive loss in the family's power.

The most aggressive oppressors were the Gauss family, who were the closest followers of the God of Life before his death. The Deity awakened a theurgy in Harper Gauss, the head of the family, which made him a demigod. There were even rumors that he participated in a fight against Citadelorous and his servant.

The Gauss family was much richer and much more influential than the Nocturne family. They could easily make the Nocturne's business partners turn their back on the traitor god's descendants by offering bribes or simply intimidating other families.

Over time, they became more and more audacious: they started attacking the musical instrument manufacturing companies, the ones that belonged to the Nocturne family, depriving them of their income. They stole and broke the equipment, stealing money and simply vandalizing.

And now this...

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The Nocturnes were abducted at night, soon after Zane's birthday. Xavier only remembered that he went to his room to sleep, and then he woke up in a cheap-looking cart. Soon, Zane and Faye came back to their senses too.

The heads of the three were foggy because of the soporific, their muscles ached because of the ropes and sleeping on cold solid wood.

They just woke up, tranquilizers in their blood still active, so they were all calm at first. But after half a minute, realization hit. They were in trouble. Faye and Xavier had been through the war, so they didn't panic. Their brains activated, trying to find a way out.

The cart was old and had many holes in its fabric, so they could see the world around them. The nature looked similar to the one surrounding their mansion, so Xavier assumed that they didn't go far from it. Could they use magic to break out and get to their mansion?

Zane and his father were tied in a way that prevented them from moving their hands and even their fingers, ensuring they couldn't cast spells. Faye was simply tied hand and foot.

Unlike his parents, Zane couldn't stay calm in such a situation for long; soon, he started crying and mumbling something through the gag in his mouth. Both parents wanted to hug him and calm him down, their hearts breaking, but they couldn't do anything, which added to their suffering.

The abductors heard the baby's cry. They wanted to avoid attracting attention, so the cart stopped. Four unremarkable men entered the cart, holding something in their hands. Zane's cry only became louder.

The four men turned out to be holding syringes. Without speaking, they approached the members of the Nocturne family. When one of them grabbed Zane's neck to give him an injection, the boy's scream turned into a screech.

Xavier swore to himself that he would never forget their simple-looking faces.

When the job was done, the four men left the cart, and soon it continued its way. A few minutes later, all the members of the Nocturne family were asleep.

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The next time they woke up, they found themselves near a mansion, easily visible through the holes in the fabric. Over the last few years, Xavier had gathered information about the Gauss family, so he immediately understood that the manor was theirs.

It was much noisier outside the cart now than it had been back in the forest. The cart was surrounded by a large number of guards. When did they appear? Besides that, did the cart make its way through the guarded rift, or did the abductors decide to take the long way?

This time, Zane didn't cry, he simply lay there, shivering. Faye crawled over to him and lay beside him, the boy calmed down a little.

Regardless, when the cart stopped near the mansion, those four men got back into it to check on the prisoners. The members of the Nocturne family pretended to be asleep.

One of the four simply approached Zane and kicked him in the stomach. The boy wheezed, and Faye immediately covered him with herself, so she got the next kick.

"I'll kill them," Xavier thought, "Each of them."

Another injection of the tranquilizer, and darkness fell upon them.

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Xavier felt the heat. The air around him was heavy and stuffy. He was hanging on the wall in a strange position. This time he awoke in a dungeon of some kind.

The room was small, yet it somehow accommodated plenty of wooden and metal devices, the kind he had seen in torture chambers before. Ropes and chains hung from the ceiling.

He tried to cast a spell to find out that he couldn't, as his hands and legs were somehow embedded into the concrete wall behind him. Earth magic?

Three other walls of the room were brick. They were dirty, though there were no blood stains on them.

The room only had one narrow entrance without a door, appearing as if some prisoner had dug it out trying to escape.

"Are Zane and Faye here?" Xavier thought. Yes, there they were, lying in a corner of the room, both still unconscious and... naked? Then he understood that he was nude too. Who did this?

It was only then that he remembered how he recognized the mansion before. The Gausses were the ones who kidnapped them. Those bastards had finally crossed the line. Xavier knew it would happen eventually, so he had spent a considerable amount of money on guards and other security measures, such as anti-magic and protective wards, or the registry of intelligent beings.

This abduction was his fault; he hadn't prepared well enough, a fatal mistake on his part.

No. Set aside this self-flagellation. Protective measures merely decrease the chance of accidents happening, but they can happen anyway. He balanced the expenses to get the best result, as a leader should do. Reaching the perfect outcome where everyone stays alive and happy is usually impossible.

Xavier continued scouring the room with his eyes, and noticed a man sitting behind the torture devices near a furnace. A jailer?

Suddenly, he heard a groan on the right. It was Faye and Zane coming to their senses. The jailer didn't flinch. Did he not hear, or did he just not care?

"Darling! Son!" he called. The gags were pulled out of their mouths while they were sleeping.

Xavier's dearest people regained consciousness quickly. They knew they should better not draw attention, but they answered nonetheless.

"Dear!" Faye shouted, her eyes desperate.

"Father!"

Xavier answered, "Calm down. I'll save us." He didn't believe his own words, and neither did they.

"Where are we?" Faye asked.

"In the dungeon of the Gausses mansion. These bastards finally crossed the line," Xavier replied.

"So it is Harper! That son of a..."

Then Faye noticed the jailer too. "Hey you! Get us out of here, and then when I'll be slaughtering everyone in this masion, I might have mercy on you!" she said, her voice low and deep.

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The man sat as he sat.

"But if you help us, guard, I will give you something anyone dreams of! You hear me?" Faye continued.

The jailer didn't even look at her. Was he deaf? Some nobles preferred their servants not to be able to eavesdrop. A deaf guard was something unprecedented, though.

Well, bribery and threats were worth a try.

What could they possibly do in that situation? The three of them remained silent, gradually getting used to the circumstances.

Zane's hands were not embedded in a wall; they were merely tied. What if...

"Son, can you cut or burn the ropes?" Xavier asked.

"No, dad. I'm sorry," Zane replied in a high voice, sobbing. "I can't move a finger."

"There is nothing to be sorry about," Faye said immediately.

"Nothing of this is our fault, remember that," Xavier added, hearing someone's footsteps.

"Your parents are correct, young man; it's all because of me," a mocking voice came from the entrance of the room. "The Nocturne family could do nothing facing such a powerful opponent."

It was Harper Gauss. Behind him, his wife stood. Unlike her husband, she wasn't dressed officially; instead, she simply wore a white shirt and trousers. Harper, conversely, dressed up as if for a holiday.

Just like any other descendant of the Deity of Life, Harper had bright, almost luminous green hair. His wife's hair color was ordinary, they didn't shine with magical colors, so she clearly wasn't a magician.

Nobody answered Harper, and he continued, "Social events are bad for long conversations. There, you have to switch your interlocutors time and time again, not being able to have a good conver..."

"Shut up, Harper. This won't be a good conversation either," Xavier interrupted him.

"And that's another reason to hate such events: I can never say what I really want, unlike now!" Harper laughed. "If you say 'shut up' once more, I'll rip your stomach out of your throat," he added, still smiling.

Xavier flinched. After he found out that the Gausses were his family's main oppressors, he started digging into them. Some time after he found out about the disgusting traditions of this family. They were hereditary sadists. Every month, they abducted a young woman and then tortured her to death. This had been happening for decades, maybe centuries. Their tendencies had been passed down through the generations.

But that wasn't all. They never ordered others to deliver the next woman to them. They always did it all by themselves. They didn't really hide it, but nobody spoke against those powerful psychopaths.

So Xavier knew that words about ripping his stomach out were not an unreasonable threat.

"What do you want from us, Harper?" Faye spoke. "You pressured all the families with blue-haired mages for years, but you have never abducted anyone to torture them. Why us?"

"You are right, I haven't abducted others yet. I could do this anytime, but killing all of you in a snap without giving you hope would be too boring," Harper said. His voice sounded gentle, as if he were explaining something obvious to a child. "Now it is time to move on to more drastic measures. You were chosen to be the first by pure random."

"You are sick! Why do you hate us so much? We never even met the Deity of Mind," Faye said.

"A demon, not a deity!" Harper's voice broke. "I'm sure that I will get much more pleasure torturing the descendants of the traitor than from killing another idiot beauty. You all remind me of the demon and his blue-haired slut!"

Harper's wife, Lady Gauss, watched their dialogue, her face expressionless.

Xavier spoke, "You know, Harper, I explored the protective measures of your mansion." His voice was quiet but clear. "I hoped to get in here and kill you to stop the oppression, then kill your wife in front of your only son to make him suffer, and only then would I kill him, to deprive the Gauss family of their future."

Suddenly, he grinned, "Now I've snuck into the manor, and the only thing left is to murder you all!"

Harper raised an eyebrow. "Good luck with that."

He looked at the jailer and said, "Take care of him until I come back. Don't mutilate him," he grinned, "too much."

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The man's only answer was "Yes."

Then Harper left the room. He enjoyed playing with his victims like this. The executioner would make Xavier believe that his life was at its lowest possible point, and then Harper would show up to prove him wrong.

Throughout the dialogue, Lady Gauss remained cold and calm. She seemed to be Harper's shadow, and now that he left, it seemed that she disappeared too.

The jailer, who turned out to be an executioner, got up. Now it was easy to see that he was wearing a dark grey leather blacksmith's apron on his naked body.

The man grabbed tongs from the table and put them in an iron bowl. He walked to the furnace and began to take out glowing coals from it with the tongs and put them in the bowl. When it was full, he approached Xavier, who was frowning at him.

"Let's begin, partner," the executioner said to the prisoner with a calm, ruthless face.

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Zane was crying, not looking at his father. The boy had recently pissed himself.

"You damn dicksucker!" Faye shouted at the executioner.

He was huffing in frustration. For almost half an hour, he had worked on Xavier, but the man didn't scream once. He only growled as the red-hot metal burned his skin.

The executioner couldn't do much more than that. The man's hands and legs were embedded into the wall, so he couldn't put needles under his fingernails. Also, as parts of the man's hands and legs were outside the wall, he could easily move and twitch, which made it hard to hold his head to rip his teeth out.

Besides that, the executioner knew that his master liked to torture people in the most elaborate ways, so he usually only used the most common methods.

But the prisoner's stubbornness irritated him a bit nonetheless. Why did he refuse to scream?

"I will make you eat your own shit, you hear me, dickhead?" Faye didn't stop. She didn't really care about Zane listening anymore. The executioner was amazed by the noblewoman's wide and deep vocabulary. He didn't know that she had been through a war, that she had heard enough never to run out of curses.

"Shut your mouth, you filthy fuckhole." The executioner approached her and gave her another kick in the stomach.

"Mom!" Zane cried.

Because of his occupation, the executioner had heard many people swearing too, so he knew how to respond to her. "If you won't shut up, I will knock your teeth out, shove them up your ass, and then mix it up with my dick!"

"How dare you!" Xavier roared.

Lady Gauss was still there, though she turned away from them in disgust. She definitely didn't like what was happening.

"Maybe I can convince her to help us?" Xavier thought, his furious mind turning into a calculating intellect. For some reason, her identity was hidden diligently, so he didn't know her name and didn't know how to address her.

"Lady Gauss, what are you doing here?" he started. "I can see that you don't enjoy watching the torture," Xavier growled.

"Harper... Is this bastard making you watch? I can get rid of him if you let me out." She flinched but didn't say anything.

The executioner interfered, "She won't go against Lord Harper; she never did. Besides, she can't use magic, so she wouldn't be able to free you from the wall behind you even if she decided to help you."

Xavier frowned. The torture continued.

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Xavier lost track of time. How was the executioner still not tired? It seemed like no more than half an hour had passed. But maybe it actually hadn't been long since Harper left?

For him, it seemed that his legs and hands were going to rip off soon. Hanging on them for so long definitely isn't good for health. Most sensitive spots of his body were covered with burns.

At least, while he was being tortured, his family was safe.

Suddenly, he heard someone's footsteps. Xavier wondered if it was Harper coming back to the party.

The footsteps approached, and it became clear that there were two people – one walking confidently, the other mincing hesitantly.

Soon, they entered the room. It was Harper Gauss and his son, Bruno, whose hair were green just like his father's. Fear was evident in the boy's face.

Xavier was shocked. That cruel bastard brought his son to watch people being tortured! Was it a tradition of some kind? Could it be the reason why all of them were serial killers?

But Bruno was five, just like Zane! Wasn't it too much even for hereditary psychopaths like the Gausses?

Harper spoke, watching Xavier. "This felon," fury reflected in Harper's eyes, "is the descendant of the demon who killed our god, the Lord of Life Inzournate. It happened five years ago, soon after you," he looked at his son, "were born."

"They," he continued, looking at the prisoners, "are the recently abducted Nocturne family. Your test is to watch my actions without turning away or closing your eyes. Of course, you can blink," he smiled gently.

Bruno's mother approached him and lay her hands on his shoulders. Harper took the red-hot tongs out of the executioner's hands. "Take a good look, son." He held it up to Xavier's face, and...

Bruno shut his eyes, but he could still hear how, for the first time, the warrior's growl turned into a scream.

"I told you not to close your eyes!" Harper shouted.

Lady Gauss squeezed her son's shoulders. She wanted to help him somehow, but she couldn't. Or was she simply afraid to do so?

The boy opened his eye a little bit. Xavier turned his face so that the boy wouldn't see a gaping hole where his left eye was.

Of course, Harper didn't like this act of heroism. "Show it! Show it to him," he ordered. The warrior didn't flinch.

"Still wanting to be an unbending awesome guy?" Harper asked calmly. "Very well."

"There are many ways to torture people, son. Sometimes you don't even need to touch them," he grinned, approaching Zane and Faye.

"No!" Xavier shouted, "Harper, if you do something to them, I will cut your heart out! Through your ass!"

The disgusting torturer laughed, "You see, Bruno? It's very effective."

Faye covered Zane with herself, but Harper pulled him out of her tied arms. The boy was crying and kicking, so the man slapped his face.

He put Zane's tied hands on the concrete wall. Then he pushed them into it, and the boy's hands immersed in the wall as if it were viscous fluid.

Harper neither moved his hands nor said something to cast a spell. Xavier couldn't understand, how that worked. Perhaps demigods could use magic without spells?

Zane's hands were now walled in just like Xavier's.

Bruno watched in horror; he was afraid of disobeying his father.

Harper grabbed a vice and approached Zane again.

Lady Gauss couldn't take it anymore. She closed her son's eyes with her hands. Zane could still hear voices, though.

"Hey, boy, why did you go limp? Did you pass out?" his father said, addressing Zane. "You bitch, why did you close my son's eyes? He must watch!" he noticed his wife's little riot.

Her hands squeezed her boy's head, and she was quiet for a few seconds. Then the storm broke out.

"Leave us alone, you crazy maniac! You and your family are a bunch of madmen! I won't let you make my son into one!" she cried terribly.

Harper laughed. "What can you do about it? He is like me already; blood is thicker than water. His dark side just hasn't awakened yet."

"Then I'll hope that he has more of my blood in him than yours!" she shouted.

Xavier was glad his son passed out because it would at least delay the torture. However, he was worried because of Zane's loud, heavy breathing. That was not how unconscious people usually sounded. Did he really pass out because of fear?

Suddenly, his son's strange breath turned into a scream, and he started convulsing.

"Zane!" Xavier and Faye shouted.

Bruno was terrified. What was happening?

Zane was thrashing about as if a demon had possessed his body, but he couldn't break free from the wall.

Harper was looking at the boy in surprise.

It seemed that Zane was a doll, that an alien force lifted his legs into the air and then slammed them back onto the floor and the wall time and time again.

That made his parents afraid that their boy could accidentally rip his hands off. What could cause this seizure? Was it painful?

Harper frowned, "Drop the act, boy. Now."

A few seconds after that command scream ran out, Zane's body went limp, hung on his hands recessed into the wall. It suddenly got very quiet in the room. "Very well," Harper grinned.

He slapped the boy's face, but the boy didn't come back to his senses. Harper slapped again. "What's wrong with him?" he said.

Xavier and Faye were going crazy with worry, shouting, "Zane! Are you alright?"

Zane groaned, his eyes finally opened.

"Son?" Xavier asked anxiously.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Faye couldn't understand what was going on. Could Harper be torturing their son in some elaborate way? But the madman appeared to be shocked just like she and Xavier were, even though Harper tried to hide it.

Finally, Zane spoke, "What," his face contorted with pain, "What does the word 'kerfuffle' mean?"

Harper's face changed. He stared at the boy in fright. He only knew one person who used this word. But the boy in front of him couldn't be that blue-haired bitch, could he?