~Fifth Night~
Ex Machina
The foreign gentleman's name was Providence, and he had a knack for younger women. One might wonder as to how the combination of his short frame, a slightly too large nose and the receding hairline did not only
not
compromise his attraction for the fairer sex, but actually increased it. Amongst female circles a thinker's brow was seemly considered more reliable a signal for virility than ripped abs.
On account of this, his latest conquest was sitting on the bed in Providence's vast new domicile. The one he had moved into after his maisonette had been raided in the crucial moment. He had lost months of preparation, most of his gear and the the one who had called upon the Mountains. The one he had wanted to keep. Providence had been capable of seeing the culprit, though, shortly before his spirit had been completely thrown back. A woman in black. An Askirtay. She had appeared to be limping on her left leg, but he couldn't be sure about that. He tended to mix up impressions from different places and times, from different
layers
once he was in deep trance.
The girl on the bed had introduced herself as Riin. Riin was now down to her tasteful lingerie, yet she still wore her high-heeled shoes.
Hidden platforms
they called them (although she had baptised this pair "cheating shoes", as she had shared with him during their dinner). They were the only items of her remaining wardrobe making an effort to hide anything at all. Her black stockings with suspender belt, lace thong and matching brassière testified to what nature her ideas for the night were of. Those signals had not been lost on Providence, a profound admirer of the female form. Alas, he had brought her here for an entirely different reason. He had to build up from scratch.
He approached the sitting girl from the other side of the bed, kneeled onto it to be close to her. She felt the mattress yield under his weight, yet made no attempt to turn around. Teased him with coquettish non-observance. Both their minds were light, hers from fashionable absinth, his from the old Tokaji that had been served at their dinner. Yet she allowed hers to open and drift. The smouldering herbs, which sent ghostly aromas from their bowl on the dresser, lulled her even more, for she wasn't used to their penumbrous effects in any way. Riin gasped as the blindfold stretched across her eye area. Her hands came up, hovering hesitatingly in front of her face for a moment. When her fingertips touched the black silk at last, it was to hold the blindfold in place whilst her lover tightened it with a knot.
So much was lost. The contact, once so strong, was gone, shattered to a mere reverberation. Providence could still recall the physical pain of the projectile drilling through the head of the one had who called upon the Mountains. Yet it had been the spiritual shock wave that had thrown him back like a rag doll during his phase of utter defencelessness. The one who had called upon the Sea had been thrown with him, and only Providence's determined will had made it keep its –
his
– aspect. At the very least it had been able to reach the crematory by its own and had not collapsed in the moment of rupture. But already he had received first notice of someone interfering with the disposal. Providence knew whom to blame even without detailed information: the Houses of the Great Old Ones, of the Outers, claiming this realm for their false gods. And amongst them that redhead sorceress, the thorn in his side, a witch if he had ever seen one.
A gentle push to Riin's shoulders bid her to lie down. She obeyed. She would not if she were to understand her dire fate. That she was to be marked. To be
touched
.
~
A Woman Well Whipped
"Loosen up a little bit," the physician reproved.
"I am."
She wasn't. In fact, Sibyl was remaining in a perfectly upright position on the chrome-heavy examination table, her gaze aimed stoically out of the room's only window. There was nothing in store for her but having her wounds attended to. Yet she was stiff as a board. It wasn't the discomfort of having the weals on her back palpated, nor the fact that she had to strip to the waist again. Being once more confronted with her castigation two nights ago – that was getting to her. That, and the sinister battalions of gleaming, polished surgical instruments lying on display for no obvious reason.
Why would he ever be in need for a rib spreader or twenty different kinds of haemostatic clamps?
"Good news. You get your stiches removed. No need for all the bandages anymore, either."
"So soon?!"
"You are a good healer. In my younger days I had lost patients with less severe cuts to sepsis."
"Maybe," she replied under her breath, "you were just a crappy doctor — Ow! Will you watch it?!"
"Sorry, slipped..."
Sibyl gritted her teeth against the weird sensation of the physician working on her flesh. A quick healer. She had been told that before.
"Will there be... something left?"
"Scars?" She heard metal on metal as he disposed another piece of thread from his pliers into a kidney bowl. "No. At least no permanent ones. You'll carry your stripes for some weeks, but they will completely fade over time."
Something cold touched her, and she involuntarily arched her back. Maybe her "stripes", as this sawbones had put it, would fade. But the disgrace had torn deeper than the whip's leather ever could. Was this meant to be Sawatzki's true revenge? No scars in the mirror to remind Sibyl of her undue behaviour, but the knowledge of its consequences in the faces of those who had witnessed the lashes? The Doktor, who had ordained them on behalf of the Countess. That brute Kask, who had delivered them on behalf of the Countess. Even László, who had been present on behalf of the Countess. The muscles of her back tightened even more, almost to the point of cramping.
"Ow! You are doing this on purpose!"
"Yes. Will you loosen up now?"
~
~
It was on her way back from the physician's torture chamber, of all occasions, that the inevitable happened: She ran into Sawatzki.
"Preili Sibyl! And recovering well, I see!" the redhead woman exclaimed with the sweetest of smiles on her face.
If that isn't our Countess Bárthory...!
"Someday I will tell you how much your concerns mean to me."
"I trust you understand that no personal motives were involved in this stern yet needful disciplination of yours. Yet this also means there is no reason to be disrespectfully towards me."
The arrogance!
"It is very brave of you to face me without your thug around to beat me into submission,
Countess
."
By now Sibyl was quite sure that Sawatzki had been in her cell that fateful night. Being whipped like a common servant girl was degrading enough, not to mention painful, but that this toffee-nosed witch had touched her...!
"Well, I will be taking advantage of Doktor Grau's hospitality for some more days. So, given your current attitude, there might be another occasion," Sawatzki sneered.
