The brand pressed into Circe’s forehead. The smoking neon half-moon burnt skin as the odor of flaming flesh rose. When it pulled away, gluey skin extended with it. Tendrils spread over her forehead and into her scalp. Sharp filet knives metaphorically peeled the top layers of her skin away. Nerves throbbed unharmed. The mark burned. The tendrils removed the sense of having skin. Her body felt like one big open wound. Any touch, the slightest movement of air, a breath against her, registered as searing pain that beckoned her to scream.

Azoria pushed Circe down with her foot. Flesh stuck to the brand pulled and then ripped. Tendrils pushed from the granite to wrap her ankles. They lovingly embraced the splint and kept her leg together, then reached for her wrists to pull her flat on her back. Arms pulled outward so that her palms pressed against the floor like suction cups. The back of her hands remained intentionally exposed. A tendril pulled over her belt line to keep her snugly against the floor. Circe wanted to scream.

Teeth Clenched as Circe struggled. Eyes watered. Back tensed. A brand hissed. It slammed down upon the back of her right hand, lifted with a crackling pop of pulled burning skin. It swung over to the left and slammed upon smooth fresh flesh. Circe arched, gurgled and spit in response. But she would not make a single solitary sound from her throat. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she refused to give Azoria the satisfaction of hearing her scream.

The calls of a man crying for his mother repeatedly made her wish she could run into the arm of her mother. The memory of learning to ride a bike filled her with hope. She’d fallen over and over again. Her skin had been torn open in a pain less intense, but eerily similar to this. Her father stayed by her side for as long as she’d been determined to learn. It had taken her forever. A pain she had endured silently without a single scream.

A paring knife peeled her skin open like skinned fruit as the tendrils shot up each arm and writhed under her clothes. Yet no physical injury existed. Nerves raged with no shock or unconscious to save her. No sweet embrace of death came to her rescue. Circe drew blood from her lower lip with her bite. Iron flowed against her tongue. But she would not scream.

A shoe slipped off her right foot. Circe’s eyes remained clamped shut as she felt it slide over her as of yet unafflicted flesh. She wished she had something to bite other than her lip. And then it hit her. What if there was no respite? What if for all eternity she’d never again feel the blissful protection of having skin? Why had she never appreciated her skin more? Wherever the lashes of her brands passed, her skin sheared off as far as her nerve endings were concerned. She wanted to scream.

The other shoe slipped off her left foot as the first shoe dropped next to her face. Circe hyperventilated as Azoria pulled her socks upward. They slid over her thin calves, pushed past her heel, and then completely to expose small rounded toes above the bump of her sole. Fingers pressed against the well-defined arch, then rubbed in a circle. Circe squirmed against the tickling sensation but couldn’t move away from it. A hand pushed against her bared toes to curl them back and straighten her feet. Azoria waited a moment but heard no protest scream.

The brand slid over granite before it pressed against the mid arch of the right foot. Pain caused the body to further tense. The back popped as she pushed against the restraints. It felt like her leg was being sliced laterally by a saw. How was she not dead yet? Slowly, Circe forced her eyes open and craned her neck to peer down over her body. Aside from the tattoo tendrils licking and flaying her flesh like flames, there was no blood, no sign of any physical injury. Her skin hadn’t been peeled off, it was under writhing shadows with beads of purple neon light. Circe opened her mouth and felt the bile rise against her tongue. Swallowing it prevented her scream.

The back of her head slammed into the granite as the brand assaulted the mid-arch of her right foot. A new eye opened with a half-lidded stare as tendrils slid over the sole and up the ankle until her calves and then her knees were covered. Azoria stood. The sharp end of the brand cut from the center of the collarbone to the convergence of the rib cage. The shirt sliced open and the bra separated to reveal the flesh over the heart. A small amount of blood seeped from a shallow scratch. As the brand threatened, Circe stared angrily with her mouth clamped shut. She refused to scream.

One last brand converged all the others upon Circe’s heart. Teeth clamped shut as her eyelids forced themselves together. Tears bubbled from her nose. Mucus ran from her eyes. Her face contorted into wrinkles. Limbs pulled against her restraints. Circe dared not scream.

The television crackled with red and black static. The screen shifted red. ALERT! ALERT! Circe looked about the broken room as flames licked upon the walls. Her flesh singed. Cracked windows exploded. Shards of broken glass flew against the wall as the television smoked with an electric hiss. Roaches screeched and popped as they failed to find cover. Circe sat on the carpet of her broken, burning room, shivering in pain, yet she wouldn’t scream.

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Her heart thumped fast as slithering coils encased it. From six brands the hateful tendrils slithered forth in the form of shadows. Wherever they touched nerves screamed. With six marks, her entire body became encased in shadow at all times. A dark aura complimented by violet embers rose as the dissolution of her spirit merged with the burning shade. Lips and teeth clamped shut even as the body tensed. Silence screamed.

Roaches scattered as shadowy tendrils caressed the splint. Pain radiated from her. It became her only thought, her only being. It absorbed every emotion like a voracious eating monster. The echoes from the cave dissipated because static popped in her ears. Tendrils slid into her mouth and drilled her teeth. Nerves activated. Eyes rolled unnaturally to the sides. Every nerve in her body expanded with a violent scream.

Azoria looked upon her victim. The aura of pain that rained upon her resembled a crushing static rain. In all of her awakenings to this world, none of the insects she pulled had ever received more than two marks, and those that had been granted two inevitably died. But Circe hadn’t soiled herself, she had swallowed her bile, and she didn’t even scream.

Azoria, finished with her work, lifted the branding iron over her left shoulder, and huffed in exasperation, “What kind of joke is this? What even are you?”

Mogg-dell would appear soon, Azoria thought, he would have an answer. This didn’t make sense. The whole point of his request was to kill her. Hadn’t all of this been meant to kill her? So why wasn’t she dead? She wasn’t even dying. When would she offer her final scream?

Eyelids opened with the pop of something that had been closed so tightly it became glued together. Pupils darted back to the center to focus on Azoria in the midst of hazy purples, greens, and blues crowding her burning vision. Behind the Demon Lord stood a giant bull with neon purple half-moon eyes and a wide smile across its snout filled with fat glistening teeth. In the center of the gaping maw, it clamped a fresh yet lifeless human heart. It bit down, gnashing the organ with a squish. Kunchen screamed.

Circe could see all of it. Azoria’s glowing dead fish stare. The glaring bull with blood dripping down its maw. A spaded tail wrapping an exposed leg. The glowing tendrils extending from the brand that had struck six times. Pain beyond words flooded her eyes until she cried blood. The jaw she clenched snapped and ground. Eyes hatefully screamed.

[Glitch Detected: Infinite Spiritual Resistance]

“So you’re an impurity. Is that why Mogg-dell is afraid?”

Azoria turned the brand and pointed the face towards the giant bull, “What exactly are you trying to achieve with my contestant?”

Circe screamed.

“I’M! GOING! TO! KILL YOU!”

The words echoed through the cave. All other sounds of pain drowned.

KILL YOU! Kill You! Kill you! Kill you. Kill you. Kill you.

And then silence. Everything stilled except for Circe. Her body rose as tendrils absorbed into her aura of pain. They popped around her as they continued to caress. Feet hovered as Circe arose. Short hair flowed even while damp with sweat. The shadows continued to embrace her body. Every cell of her existence flooded with endless pain. Screamed.

An unrestrained animalistic roar broke forth as her broken body shot forward. Azoria shattered like a statue of glass without warning. Mogg-dell glared.

She hit him head first.

Circe vanished before the spectating cave through the violet mist of a floating dungeon portal. It closed instantly afterward.

[Glitch Patching: Infinite Spiritual Resistance Nullification]

Circe shot out of the portal to slam face first through the high end of a fecal stalagmite. Then another, and another as her body shot forward propelled by uncontrolled pain. Fecal clay exploded and crumbled as the formations broke. Finally, her body lost momentum and rolled, dropped, then skidded across a shallow pool of toxic refuse.

The petite body of the battered woman disappeared under the slowly churning gunk. She suddenly rose, but her lunch fell into the gunk with a churning...

Gloooruuuufff.

Too much pain coursed through her body to care about the smell. Circe crawled on her hands and knees. Blood ran down her face. Her nose had been smashed from the impacts. With what little energy she had left, she struggled to hug a more solid mound of fecal material. Bubbles burst around her as she coughed. Her left front tooth dropped and she spit it out. She squinted as she looked around the vast caverns. Were those bookshelves? Had this place been a library once?

[Spiritual Resistance: 999]

The half moon marks sensed that her glitch had been patched and bit down upon every nerve of her body.

Arms tensed, biceps strained as she positioned herself on the mound so she wouldn’t slide down and drown in fecal muck.

Every form of pain imaginable encroached upon her battered body courtesy of the half-moon marks. The intensity raised and fell if only to better maximize her suffering. She put together one last coherent thought before her mind became consumed with mitigating the work of the shadowy tendrils.

Perhaps kicking the bull thing out of her head had not been the right move after all.

Then pain encroached. All became pain. Stinging, burning, biting, cuting, slicing, abrading, drilling, clamping, tearing, pain.