When Benjamin looked down at his chest, there was a hole there.

A large, gaping, smoking hole where his sternum used to be.

The edges of the wound were charred black, the flesh cauterized by the heat of that yellow beam, and through the opening he could see the raw pink of his regenerating organs knitting themselves together in a frantic, desperate dance.

The pain was searing, and it lanced through every nerve in his body with each heartbeat.

He tried to stand by pushing himself up with his hands, his muscles screaming in protest, and his legs trembling beneath him.

But the whips found him again.

Several of those black lengths stabbed into his shoulders, thighs, forearms, and his calves.

They pierced through muscle, sinew, and pinched against bone, holding him in place against the cracked oak with the efficiency of a collector mounting a butterfly to a display board.

He could not move or pull free. He was stuck, suspended, bleeding from a dozen fresh wounds while that small girl approached him from across the torn battlefield.

She walked slowly, her bare feet silent on the grass, her whips dragging behind her like a bridal train made of nightmares.

Her face was twisted with grief and hatred, her yellow eyes burning with an intensity that made Benjamin’s stomach turn. [Wait, isn’t she too angry? And too strong?] [Ben]

She looked like a child who had been forced to grow up too fast, like a doll that had been cracked and glued back together wrong.

"Why?" Benjamin called out, throwing his head back against the bark and letting his voice carry across the clearing with exaggerated theatrical pain. "Why are you doing this to innocent old me? Who sent you to kill me? What did I ever do to you? I have never even seen you before in my entire life! I do not know your face, and I don’t know anything about you, or your family, or whatever grudge you are carrying!"

"Shut up, you devil!!" The girl screamed, and she lunged forward, her small hands closing around Benjamin’s neck with a grip that was definitely too strong for her size.

She shook him violently, her long nails digging gruesomely into his throat, her tears falling like hot rain onto his bloodied chest. "I... I hate you so much! I hate you! I hate the way you pretend to be innocent when I know what you are! I know what you did!"

Benjamin then stopped the act.

He let his body go completely limp, his head lolling to the side, his eyes half-lidded.

At that point, he just watched her.

Watched the small, weeping girl sob on him as her whips stayed embedded in his flesh, holding him in place while she poured out her heart in front of him.

"We... sniff... were happy...sniff..." she started, her voice cracking and wailing louder with each word, the sound of it raw and ragged, utterly broken. "We were living a normal life! A good life... sniff... ! We did not bother anyone! We kept to ourselves and we loved each other... we were happy... until you appeared! Until you ruined everything! Mother... sniff! Mother... Why did you kill my mother? My precious mother, whom I loved more than anything in the entire world! She was everything to me! She was my whole world, and you took her from me! You took her away and... and... and sniff... left me empty!"

She shook him again, her tears splattering against his face.

"I will have my revenge, I swear to Elyndor," she hissed, her voice dropping to a whisper that was somehow more terrifying than her screams. "And I will not stop with just you. I will make sure everything that carries your scent is exterminated from this worl—"

PARA-PARA-PARA-PARAAAA!

The noise cut through the air like a blade made of discordant sound — a blaring, shrieking, utterly terrible horn that seemed to scrape against the inside of a skull.

It was not music. It was not even good enough to be called noise.

It was an assault on the ears, basically a sonic weapon that made the little girl immediately release Benjamin’s neck and clamp both hands over her ears, her face contorting in agony.

"Stop!" she screamed, her voice barely audible over the ongoing blast of that awful instrument. "It is too loud! Make it stop right now! I cannot take it!"

But the horn kept blowing, wild and untamed, completely devoid of skill.

The girl stumbled back, some of her whips retracting from Benjamin’s body as she tried to escape the sound, but it followed her, drove her to her knees with her hands pressed so hard against her ears.

"I said stop that already!!" she shrieked.

One of her tentacles lashed out blindly, swatting the horn from the performer’s hands with a violent motion that sent the instrument spinning through the air and landing with a dull clatter on the grass.

"Ah, I am so sorry about that!" The woman who had been playing the awful horn cried out, her face a mask of apology and embarrassment.

She immediately ran to retrieve the fallen horn, bending down with a grunt to scoop it off the grass, her fingers fumbling with the curved brass.

But then the little girl’s voice cut through the silence, and it was no longer filled with rage.

"M... Mother...?"

The woman froze.

Rahab—for it was indeed Rahab, wearing the simple linen dress that Sara had loaned her, her pale face flushed with exertion—picked up the horn instrument that Deva had gifted her with such hopeful enthusiasm, specifically for the purpose of sexually arousing Benjamin with its "melodic" tones.

She straightened slowly, turning to face the small girl who was still standing near Benjamin’s bloodied form.

And Rahab’s expression shifted.

"Ah," she said, her voice soft and almost bemused. "Well, well... If it isn’t little Nyx."

She began walking toward them, her bare feet padding softly across the torn earth.

"What are you doing all the way out here, attacking my master?"

Behind her, Deva followed—her own face a portrait of utter bewilderment, her eyes darting between Rahab, the girl, and the bloodied Benjamin with an expression that asked every question her lips could not form.