Torture was really not Arne’s style as a general rule.

The priestess, a beautiful fair-haired woman with alabaster skin, now bloodied and open in terrible ways, and blue eyes… well, eye, since one of them now had …hooks in it, had been screaming dutifully but not giving them anything.

The wobble of the hooks when she tried to blink was downright sickening.

Torture. Arne was happy with the result of it on occasion, but it wasn’t the most used weapon in his arsenal. He had been just thirteen the first time he had taken a life and was by no means squeamish, but he still found other people’s prolonged helplessness …somewhat distressing. A quick stab in the dark, cut down in open combat; those were acceptable ways to leave this world in Arne's opinion, and he hoped he would get to die as a victim of one of those options.

Toog clearly didn’t labour under any of these limitations.

Watching Toog’s exceedingly serene and calm approach to how anatomy was supposed to work and how to make it stop without killing the priestess …inspired respect. And frankly, terror. Arne was completely aware that he was both a killer, a murderer, a thief and occasionally downright a greedy piece of shit, but Toog seemed to genuinely believe that the horror the young priestess was experiencing right now brought on mainly by wooden wedges, fishing hooks and a flaying knife, served a higher scholarly, even spiritual, purpose.

He had cast a glance on Toog’s meticulous notes during the work, that had now gone on for more than an hour, mostly to look away when it got too rough, but they were written in a language he didn’t understand and the quick precise drawings were also masterful and rather explicit.

Arne was generally good at reading people, however, and as he sat there, waiting for the breaking point to happen, twirling his tarbean tea mug around on the table, he began to suspect that at least half of the pain was …a performance?

“What is the Family?” Toog asked again, conversationally. “What is the Family’s purpose?”

The young woman in the chair only responded with a whimper and Toog sighed.

Arne looked at Dia who was slumped over the table, happily snoozing.

“Don’t worry. You can tell me. I’m your friend. I can make the pain stop,” he heard Toog’s gentle voice.

Arne got to his feet and stretched his arms over his head. He walked to the little fireplace and put the kettle on. It was probably going to be a long and nauseous night. He leaned on the wall next to the fireplace, arms crossed.

Toog took a step back, staring down at the priestess with a perplexed look, then came over to Arne. They exchanged glances; Toog’s clearly indicating puzzlement.

“I’m guessing this is unusual. Do they train them?” Arne mused in a whisper. “Or did coming back from the dead just make her tough as an ant?”

“I don’t know.” Toog shrugged and began putting crushed tarbeans into the metal strainer. “I have seen a lot of flesh and layers and everything looks to be in order but…”

“But?” Toog didn’t bother speaking at a whisper, so Arne gave up doing that. If it was a ploy to make the victim consider their options or an actual exchange of information, he didn’t know.

“But that thing isn’t actually human, is it?” Toog turned to look at the bound and beleaguered priestess.

…Who suddenly sputtered into a laugh and turned her face towards them, the hooks garishly wobbling with the motion. “Finally, you ask a sensible question, little torturer,” came a voice from inside the woman’s slack mouth. “You are correct. I am not human.”

Arne sucked in his breath in involuntary shock. The voice was not a woman’s. It wasn’t even fully human, reverberating like an impossible echo inside his mind, and somehow struck him on a primal level that instantly forced his body to prepare for an attack, muscles tightened, vision sharpened, heart sped up.

Slowly, Arne moved in a semicircle around to be in front of the bound priestess, well out of range. He dared not take his eyes off her slack face. The eye with the hooks in it was twitching constantly against her upper eyelid as if it wanted to roll into the back of her skull. The other eye had already done so, showing only a bloodshot white.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Alright…” Arne said hesitantly to the still figure. “If you’re not human, what are you then?”

“Beyond your meagre understanding,” the voice sounded from the slack jaw, only accompanied by a thin line of drool down the woman’s chin.

“Beyond death, too?” Toog asked, curious, maybe even eager, and moved over to stand near Arne.

“Death has no meaning to my kind. As I already told you, I was ancient long before the oldest beings of your paltry flesh-race came into this plane of existence,” the un-voice stated; not without a certain amount of pride.

“You seem to have very little respect for humans, but you are in fact …wearing one?” Arne asked tentatively, not sure if provoking a creature that claimed to be ‘ancient long before the oldest beings of your paltry flesh-race came into this plane of existence’ was a wise move. “Why is that?”

“Because you are so uniquely malleable, little thief,” came the reply in a disdainful tone. “There is nothing you cannot be made to accept of your own volition and nothing too vile or too glorious not to be worshipped by you.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Toog held up a hand. “Let’s return to the deathless theme. Where is the place that life is tethered?”

The laugh was like a mental explosion although it couldn’t really be heard in the physical world, and both Toog and Arne flinched. “Flesh child!” the voice said when the mirth died down, “your kind has no tether. But you can seek your immortality with me. Join the priesthood and humble yourself before the might of the Primeval Powers. Then you will experience unending glory when we retake our rightful place as in the days long before your memory.”

Arne considered the voice carefully without looking directly at the prisoner. It was easier when he didn’t see how the hideous hooks wobbled. But the voice was… bluffing? Or at least trying to sell them a bell tower. He reminded himself of the hideous tentacle beast so he wouldn’t take it lightly, but he quickly ran through the list of questions in his mind and decided to steer the conversation. “So,” he asked the slack jawed prisoner, “is that what the Family is to you? They worship you? Are you sure? Because we have been to quite a few orgies and nobody mentioned you.”

“They are but an energy source,” the voice answered calmly.

“How so?”

“They call us and sustain us,” the voice just said.

Toog looked at the broken priestess with narrowed eyes. “So is there a tentacle monster inside that woman right now? She looks so small, and the eye-tentacle-thingy wasn’t.

“No, torturer, there isn’t. But she did invite me in with no hesitation,” the voice bragged, or so the tone seemed to Arne.

“Are you sure? I mean, from here, you really just look like… well, a rather unfortunate corpse, not to put too fine a point on it,” Arne commented sceptically. “I don’t think anyone would invite that, to be honest.”

“You do not know the glory you speak of, pathetic little thief.”

“Alright, so how does one invite you then? Or invite your kind?”

“With the ritual, of course. You have been feeding us energy in exchange for unrivalled physical pleasure. But you could always commit yourself to the ritual and call me. If you do that, you might be shown kindness and love, and you might be found worthy of joining with. There is a reason the enaction of the ritual is called the joyful union.”

“Joining. With you, or with your boss?” Arne asked. “Who do you serve?”

The hook in the eye twitched fiercely and Arne looked sideways at Toog to see if he was right in assuming he had succeeded in pissing a possessing tentacle beast thoroughly off. Toog looked from the broken priestess to him and back again quickly.

“It’s just… You know, all-powerful beings don’t get sent off to occupy a random, very abductable priestess of a happy orgy cult,” Arne explained.

The voice laughed, wet and suggestive in their minds. “How do you know, little thief?”

“Well, I don’t know tentacle society, but I know how power structures work. You are just a tiny servant, far, far down the ladder of importance. An errand boy at best. The only good you can do is to pave the way for your betters, right?”

Toog slowly reached out and tugged his sleeve. “Maybe don’t antagonise the mystery tentacle possession thingy?”

“Oh, no, pay her no mind, little thief,” the voice cut in.

Her, Arne thought.

“Antagonise all you want, you are already lost,” the voice said calmly. “We are numerous and already walk among you in any form we choose. Please, speak more, to make it easier to impersonate you when I ride you like a cheap whore.”

Arne burst out laughing. “Aha. You have a bit of a temper, if I’m not mistaken. Are ‘Primeval Powers’ supposed to have that? Bragging is usually a sign of a weak character.”

“WE have a temper!” the voice boomed in sudden unstoppable fury. “And make no mistake, little thief, we are ALL watching you right now through the flesh of this vessel. You think you are safe in your shadows, don’t you?”

Suddenly, Toog let out a piercing shriek just next to him and then almost flew towards the bound priestess, and in a swift and decisive motion jumped on her lap, grabbed her head and twisted it creakingly to the side until an awful wet pop sounded a second later.

Arne took a stumbling step back, nausea nearly overwhelming him when memories of The Vampire mingled a little too forcefully with the right-now horror he had to deal with. Screaming incoherently, Toog had reached for a saw on the table next to the now very broken priestess and began sawing her head off while blood gushed forth in dull waves. Behind them, Dia had jumped to her feet, the chair toppling over, and was screaming, “What the Hells did you dick-tards do now, who needs to die? Who!”

With shaking hands, Arne took a very deep breath and left the room.