Book 2 - Chapter 4

Brin joined the crowd fifteen minutes before noon under an appropriately overcast sky. He thought he was early, but so many people were already crowding around the town square that he never would’ve been able to see if there weren’t a raised wooden platform. He kept forgetting that this body wasn’t as tall as his past life. He didn’t actually know if he’d grow to his previous height in this body. Aberthol had been malnourished, and Brin still had a lot of catching up to do to reach the average height of adults in this town. He was already thirteen and a half.

To his surprise, Marksi had come along, but he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. Normally the little guy was sensitive to bad emotions, but he didn’t really have an issue with crowds and none of the negative feelings were directed towards Brin this time. He skittered from shoulder to shoulder, stretching up and trying to see what all the commotion was about. There was nothing to see, yet.

There was no sign of the Prefit or Tawna, and Hogg was in the back watching the crowd. Brin and Marksi were alone, until Zilly saw them.

Unlike his straight black hair, Zilly had the curly light brown hair that was common in the Bog, curious eyes, and a perpetual mocking smirk. Where until recently she’d always worn the regular mid-calf dresses of the women of the Bog, she now wore brown leather pants with a sword belted at the hip. It wasn’t custom to wear your weapons around town, but no one begrudged their golden child and newest [Warrior].

The sword jangled wildly as she flounced over. She reached down to stabilize it, but her hand stopped short at grabbing the hilt, and then awkwardly reached down to hold the scabbard instead.

She held out her arms, and Marksi jumped into her, crawling all around her while purring. “Oof! You’re getting so big!” She caught him and wrapped him in her arms, petting his scaly noggin.

“Is she really going to be flogged? That’s what everyone is saying,” said Zilly.

Brin eyed the wooden pole on the platform, with dangling handcuffs to hold a person in place while they were being beaten. “That’s what it looks like.”

“Everyone hates Tawna for convincing the Prefit into moving up System Day, but that’s not why she’s being punished, right? People are saying that she forced someone to take an evil Class.” Zilly raised her eyebrow suggestively.

“Is that what they’re saying?” asked Brin.

“Why are you being so cagey? We all know it had to have been you,” said Zilly. “What Class did you get?”

“The Prefit said he’d explain it to everyone all at once,” said Brin. “Just wait until then. Noon is only like five minutes away.”

“You’ve got all those scars. Was it [Scab Eater]?” asked Zilly.

“What? No!” Brin said, a little perturbed at how close yet how far away that guess was.

Zilly rolled up her sleeve, to reveal a long, bulging scab in a two-inch long line on her forearm. “I got tagged during practice. Well? Does that do anything for you?”

“Stop,” said Brin, pushing her arm down.

Zilly scratched it, making part of it come off at the end, a spot of dark blood welling up underneath. “Are you suuuure you don’t want this?”

“Oh gross! Cut it out! That’s disgusting!” Brin stepped back to avoid the bloody scab

She laughed and taunted him with it while he edged away, moving through the villagers who looked just as disgusted as he was at Zilly’s antics. It was rare for anyone to disapprove of anything Zilly did, but this proved it could be done.

Finally, she relented and dropped it, and put a handkerchief to her bleeding arm.

“I’m a [Glasser]. For real. The Prefit will explain the rest,” said Brin.

“Fine. Be that way,” pouted Zilly.

“How’s Myra, by the way?” asked Brin. He spotted her in the back of the crowd. Her head was high and her eyes straight forward, studiously avoiding everyone’s gaze. Her long, straight black hair shone like she was in a shampoo commercial, and she wore an elaborate, colorful dress. [Weavers] dressed very finely as a rule, but today was something extra. She looked like a completely different class than the people around her.

“Myra? I don’t know.”

“How do you not know? She’s your best friend,” said Brin.

“I guess…”

Before he could ask what that meant, a new commotion rose through the crowd. The Prefit and [Weaver] Tawna had arrived. The crowd murmured angrily when they arrived, and while no one outright hurled insults, he saw a multitude of hostile frowns cast in her direction.

The crowd parted, letting them walk to the platform and step up the stairs. Tawna had done her hair as finely as her daughter, but she wore a simple black evening dress. Her face was neutral, as if she were in line at the post office instead of waiting for a brutal and public flogging. She hung back near the pole, while Prefit Elmon stepped forward to address the crowd.

“Hear ye!” The Prefit’s voice was piercing, loud enough to be heard over the crowd without seeming to shout. “This woman, Tawna Corrigid the [Weaver], has been pronounced guilty of the following crime: The corruption of a child. She committed a campaign of slander, verbal abuse, and rumor mongering with the explicit aim and successful accomplishment of driving a child into a Class that has been classified as Unwholesome and Illicit by the bylaws of Hammon’s Bog. She confessed verbally in my hearing and the hearing of the council that this was her aim, that it was fully intentional, and that she alone bears responsibility.

“This crime bears in general the punishment of exile or in extreme cases, death. It was the decision of the Elder’s Council of Hammon’s Bog that her punishment should be lessened, in light of the following mitigating factors:

“That the child in question attributes the evil Class he gained with saving his life. That the child in question was able to resist the influence of the evil Class and committed no crime, atrocity, or unkindness during his time with the Class. That the child in question reset his Class on his own volition, without persuasion or compulsion, and now bears a Common Class of exceptional utility to the town. His exact Class has been verified by myself in a manner that removes the possibility of doubt.

“Other claims about the beneficial results of Tawna Corrigid’s actions could not be verified by the Council and therefore could play no part in the determination of her guilt or sentence.

“For her crimes, and in light of the mitigating factors, Tawna Corrigid the [Weaver] has been sentenced to one-hundred and four strokes of the lash, to be carried out immediately.”

The Prefit stepped down from the platform, and a man in a black mask stepped up. Brin couldn’t place him. He thought he should be able to make a guess as to which Lantern-man it was based on the build and height, but for some reason it was hard for his brain to latch onto those details. An effect of the mask, or maybe some town Skill, but something was going on there. [Know What’s Real] didn’t help either. The man was real, just masked.

“When he says now, he really means now, huh?” Brin whispered to Zilly. “Are they going to do all one-hundred and four right now?”

“Yeah. Why drag it out?” she answered.

In his old world, the islamic states that still used the lash as punishment never did more than fifty at a time, and thirty for women. If someone was sentenced to more than that, it was spread out over multiple days or weeks. People started dying at around eighty lashes, and Tawna was going well above that. Then again, she probably had higher Vitality than any man alive in Brin’s world.

The masked man stepped towards her, but rather than break out the whip, he gave Tawna something to drink, and then read her something written on a clipboard. Instructions? But what instructions could there be? Stand there and get hit; that was the deal.

“Legal agreement; she has to acknowledge that this is a lawful punishment, not just a mob beating her up,” explained Zilly at his questioning glance.

Then she snickered. “This is such a cop out. Calisto is great at removing scars, especially if you can get to them fast. She’ll be back to normal by the end of the week.”

Brin frowned at her. He had no reason to defend Tawna, but something about Zilly’s attitude was rubbing him the wrong way.

“It’s not nothing,” said Brin. “You know, when I was a kid my friend and his cousin found a bullwhip in his dad’s shed and they decided to test it out. His cousin hit him first, and my friend said it was the most painful thing he’d ever experienced, before or since. He said it’s heavier than he expected, like getting kicked, but then the stinging and the shock of sudden pain hits all at once. And that’s not even the worst part; after that it feels like it’s burning under your skin until you can’t stand it any more. He said that he went into shock from the pain, threw up and got a chill. From one strike of the lash. This is… this…”

He didn’t know what it was. He’d wanted this, right? He’d wanted her to be punished, for the whole town to hear that he was right and she was wrong, and for her to hurt. But something about this was intensely uncomfortable. He felt exposed. In his old world, they just quietly threw the criminals in a cage and let them rot for a couple decades, somewhere where the victims couldn’t see what they went through. Here, he was part of it.

Why would Tawna do this? She could’ve gotten away with a slap on the wrist.

Tawna signed something, and the hooded man put the clipboard away. He fetched his whip.

Tawna gestured to the crowd, and her dress unraveled itself, the threads wriggling and moving apart, baring her down to the waist. Hammon’s Bog didn’t have the same taboo about nudity that his old world did, but he didn’t think anyone was unaffected by the sight of the normally reserved [Weaver] suddenly topless.

All at once, Brin understood. This was a coup. Nobody liked to see a beautiful woman beaten half to death. After today, everyone would be back on Tawna’s side. Honestly, he might even be part of that ‘everyone’. Any thought that he was going to enjoy watching this fled from his mind.

She turned around, exposing her bare back, and lifted her arms. The cuffs on top of the beams reached down and clasped her wrists, pulling her arms up.

Whack! Brin flinched at the sudden sound. The hooded man had landed the first strike, and a faint red welt formed on her pristine white skin.

“One,” called out the Prefit.

Marksi flinched at the sound, and jumped from Zilly’s arms back to Brin’s shoulders. Rather than hide his face, Marksi fixed his eyes on Tawna. How much did Marksi understand? He understood enough. He knew that Tawna was no friend of his, and watched with grim determination.

The lashes kept coming, and the Prefit called the count. “Two. Three. Four.”

Now that he was watching, Brin saw that the hooded-man was swinging full force. He put his whole body into the swings, and each hit sounded like the crack of lightning.

“Her Vitality is higher than I thought. I don’t know if I could take ten of those,” whispered Brin.

“They adjust the force to the person,” said Zilly.

Tawna stayed silent for the first few, but on the tenth she let out a yelp. Then she let out a cry on each lash after that.

They weren’t slow by any means, maybe one lash every two seconds, but time seemed to drag on for an eternity. Twenty. Thirty. By forty, Tawna’s little cries had turned to full on screams.

Her entire back was crisscrossed with angry red welts. The fiftieth lash was the first one to break the skin.

“Fifty-one.”

“Fifty-two.”

Why was this taking so long? He wanted it to be over. He’d been wondering if he’d wanted this before, but now he was sure: He didn’t want this.

At sixty, Tawna’s screams were just groans. She stopped standing under her own power; instead she hung from the cuffs on her wrists.

“Sixty-one. Sixty-two.”

He thought about yelling “Stop,” but didn’t think he had the right. She’d chosen this.

Someone did yell stop at seventy. He heard the sound of quiet sobbing from several women. At eighty, Tawna stopped moving or making any sound at all. She hung loosely on the pole, while the strikes from the whip shook her body.

Was she faking it? He didn’t think so. She was the type who was too proud to show any kind of weakness. More likely this was much worse than she’d thought it would be and she’d passed out from the pain.

Her back was covered with blood. It didn’t gush out like any of the stab wounds Brin had received; they were surface level injuries, but her pale white skin was covered in a thin layer of red.

It was almost a relief that she’d stopped moving. Time seemed to speed up, and for the last twenty lashes, the hooded man whipped an unmoving body.

“One-hundred four.”

The town square was silent. No one moved, least of all Tawna. Her clothing didn’t reform, and the cuffs on her wrists didn’t loosen. The hooded-man had to undo them himself, and she’d woven in a way to make them hard to release, so he had to cut them off with a knife.

Tawna collapsed onto the platform. Two Lantern-men arrived with a litter to carry Tawna away.

Looking around at the crowd, Brin didn’t sense a single iota of the hostility that they’d come here with. Tawna had won. She’d mollified their anger. Only she would be able to tell if it was worth it.

Prefit Elmon took the stage again. He assured the crowd that Tawna was alive and would recover, explained the fate-eaters that Tawna would provide and then dismissed the crowd, but Brin only listened to half an ear.

He looked for Myra and saw her standing apart from the crowd who, perhaps from guilty conscience, had edged far away from her during the flogging.

She had the same calm mask, but her fists were clenched, white knuckled.

Brin nudged Zilly, then indicated Myra with his head. Zilly shook her head.

“Go on!” said Brin.

“I can’t!”

“Go!”

“No!”

Brin pushed Zilly by the shoulder, forcing her to take a few steps in that direction to catch her balance. To her credit, Zilly walked the rest of the way under her own power.

She opened her arms for a hug, and Myra grabbed on like a drowning woman reaching for a liferaft. Finally the mask cracked and she buried her face in Zilly’s shoulder, sobbing.

Zilly patted her on the back, looking conflicted. But soon that broke down, too, and Zilly was crying while saying “Sorry” over and over again.

Brin heaved a sigh of relief. He had no idea what was going on with those two, but he remembered middle school. The girls back then had been in a political quagmire of constantly-shifting feuds and alliances, where best friends would turn to worst enemies and then back again in the same week. But that drama shouldn’t get in the way of real life events like this. He knew Zilly well enough to know that if she’d let the current drama, whatever it was, prevent her from stepping up right now, she’d regret it forever.

He’d need to make sure to catch up with them again later to figure out what was going on.

The crowd stood around, chatting about what they had just witnessed. All the anger and tension from before seemed to have completely drained away, replaced by a solemn sort of sadness.

What to do now? He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He didn’t really feel like doing anything, but at the same time felt restless.

It was Davi that rescued him. The huge teenager clapped him on the back. “Hey. Let’s go work out.”

“Honestly, that sounds perfect,” Brin said. “I feel… too much. You know?”

“I know,” said Davi.

Brin and Dave had lapsed in their workouts since System Day. The big reason was because Brin had been recovering from his wounds, but the other reason was because they didn’t need to anymore. There were no big achievements to grind for anymore, and [Glassers] didn’t really need all that much Strength. Neither did [Bards].

Davi immediately started walking for his house, so Brin went along. The hulking teenager was way too big to be a [Bard]; everyone expected him to be a [Farmer] like his parents. Davi liked farming. He always said so. It was a mystery why he even got offered [Bard], and an even bigger mystery why he’d accepted it.

Brin didn’t miss the bags under Davi’s eyes, or the way that his colorful patchwork shirt seemed to not fit him very well.

“Hey, help me get my mind off Tawna. Tell me about [Bard]. What’s that like?”

Davi frowned and stared at the ground. “It sucks, Brin. It really, really sucks.”