The Villainess Will Not Bring Dishonor To Her Family

124 - Prelude to Decision - The Fallen's Part

"You! Are people nothing but numbers to you?!" I scream at him. I pull, and rip and eventually hit him again, sending droplets of both blood and mud flying... over and over I hit him even after his eyes roll back and the mud by his face starts turning red. Even after the others pull me off of him and try to calm me down.

I know... I know that it will never get Rudder back, but that bastard needs to suffer! Suffer!... suffer..... even if Rudder would have let him go.

I sink into the mud, the others' warm hands on my back and shoulders to calm me down... but Rudder isn't here. Tears stream down my face, and I gasp into the mud as I once again remember the feeling of holding his still warm corpse... and the terrified look underneath the thick almost slimy layer of blood that had covered his face, and the way it had been seeping into his eyes.

My stomach turns, and I grit my teeth to hold it down.

A wet splash brings my attention back to Peony as the others try to wake him up again... unfortunately he does. Coughing blood and spitting out more teeth.

A muffled grunt escapes him as they force his hand onto the mud, then stab at the thumb with a knife. A muffled grunt of pain escapes him as the dull knife sinks into his hand. He begins to squirm while they try to stab off his thumb, but because he struggles and clenches his hand tight it makes a bloody mess in the soft slippery mud... and the blood starts pouring out as the thumb begins to detatch with enough hits, not much unlike my useless arm was yesterday. It dangles, still partly attached to his hand as they rip it off the last bit, causing my stomach to turn. Then they cauterize his hand, only to proceed with the other one... All while he withholds his screams as if to deny us the satisfaction... but he doesn't know...

He doesn't know that the revenge of hurting him when he doesn't understand his sin tastes sour and bitter. How the look in his eyes so convinced that he didn't deserve this just makes you want to hurt him more... hurt him more so that maybe he would understand the pain we're going through... but it never happens.

They end it with cutting out his tongue, tossing the lost body parts to the fish in the river.

We know that this is not what our Lady ordered, and that we would be punished by her if these actions were found out. Furthermore, we would be punished for 'losing' the magic blocking chains... A punishment we were prepared to take. It was a debt we was willing to carry to make sure that Peony was helpless and would live whatever remains of his life like that. We know that people would most likely have ignored Peony no matter how badly he spoke of our Lady, or how many secrets he said he knew. After all, he is condemned a coward... and they'll think he's a liar from having his tongue cut out.

But Peony is clever. Even if he feels nothing for others. He could still corner them in a conversation and could use that in his favor. He will now never do so. In the same manner he could have written letters, or he could have turned to attack either the helpless or our Lady. So we took away his ability to write, to use a weapon and to use magic. All to leave him at the mercy of the other people that he only thinks of as numbers.

With all that against him, he can only hope for the kindness he did not show Rudder.

When we tossed him on the road leaving castle Tepet, his bird fairy landed on his back as though to encourage him, and the last I saw was him stumbling to his feet in his bloody clothes without looking back.

—-*—-

That Headal agreed to two days of peace meant that the Tepet army had time to set up mass funerals for everyone they had not yet had time to burn... There was no burial, just massive bonfires of soldiers and knights just barely cleaned up and stripped for their weapons and armor in the process.