Human cruelty
I was born with nothing. I was neither talented with magic nor talented with weapons, besides, I was also shy and a fearful.
However, the thing that doomed me most was the family into which I was born, the Bensomnert, a family of contract killers numbering hundreds, with a long and impressive history.
Nobles, and even kings, albeit rare, these are some of the targets my family is hired for.
Shadow magic is the ability that sets them apart... a magic which makes you lethal and deceitful, perfect for assassins.
My family symbol is a deltoid with a blue hawk eye in the center.
The blue falcon is the family's symbol animal, the fastest and deadliest diving bird in the world, so much so that it could kill even animals and monsters three times its size under the right conditions.
The Bensomnerts use chess pieces to rank family members and it's all based on merit and strength, a very old-fashioned but effective way of defining ranks.
The king and queen represent the patriarch and his wife, then we have by rank: rooks, bishops, knights and finally pawns.
No person has the rank guaranteed for life, the strongest can become king by defeating the regent king in a mortal duel. The queen of the defeated king will then have to clash with the consort, if any, of the new king, whoever wins becomes queen. King and queen are at the same level in the family ranking, in fact, this same process also occurs when a woman of the family challenges the regent queen.
Although the fifth son of the current patriarch, I was a nonentity.
How could it be born a being like me just from the most important person in the family?
At the age of three you learn the use of knives, the main weapon of the Bensomnerts, at four the short sword and at five you begin to learn to use shadow magic, however my ability lacked in all three fields and for this reason my childhood was perpetually filled with looks of disgust and beatings from my family.
At only 6 years old my future was already decided. I would have to undergo the "purge", perhaps the cruelest practice of the Bensomnert family.
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'I'm scared… they blindfolded me and… I'm scared…' I was crying, my limbs were shaking, I knew what a purge was, it was something that any child in my family knew at 4 years old, just to be motivated to improve as soon as possible.
They tied me to the chest to a cot, then tied my arms outstretched and my legs apart.
"Let the purge begin!" A loud and cavernous voice broke my thoughts.
"F-father…" A soft moan escaped from my dry throat. It had been almost a day since I had drunk and two days since I had eaten.
I felt a blade being sharpened to my right, while all around me I heard giggles and excited voices.
I knew where I was, I was in a room in Bensomnert's main house called the Death Cradle, an elliptical room capped by an elliptical dome with an oculus at the center. The dome was held up by dark ash-colored columns of the Corinthian order in which hung mana dim light lamps.
The floor was embellished with mosaics that recounted the most famous murders in the family's history.
The room also had dimly lit white marble bleachers all around it.
I could hear the stands being completely filled with people laughing or making comments about my ineptitude. Those people were none other than my family members….
The cot on which I was tied was located in the very center of the room used for the custom of purge.
I heard heavy footsteps, the person who was approaching me was probably an adult male of imposing build, a rare build among the Bensomnerts, from this I understood it was one of the executioners of the family.
'I... why was I born?… I couldn't choose anything... I was condemned from birth...' My head began to cloud between a mixture of anger and resignation, the drug they had given me shortly before was starting to take effect. It was a drug that clouded the mind but accentuated the pain.
*Swing!
I heard the air hiss and then… *Thwack! My arm was severed cleanly by a cold blade.
"AHHhhk!" A strangled scream came out of my mouth, was it me screaming? I didn't understand it, I only knew that a searing pain exploded in an instant from my left arm, at shoulder level and then flared up all my limbs.
I heard someone near me move and then…
*Swing!
Pain,
*Swing!
MORE PAIN, more pain…
*Swing!
more pain...
After my left arm it was time for the right one, then the man with the sword moved to my legs, thus severing all four of my limbs cleanly.
My head, perhaps due to too much pain or perhaps due to the drug in my body, slowly shut down.
A little later I heard distant words, the voice was that of my father, or rather, of the patriarch.
"The first part of the purge can be concluded!!"
The hall erupted in warm applause.
"Diseased branches can kill even the most luxuriant plant, and that's not allowed in the Bensomnert family! All diseased branches must be cut!"
The applause increased in intensity again, and then suddenly fell silent.
"Now come my children!"
We moved on to step two of purging practice.
The siblings of the one who had been afflicted with the purge would have to insert 5 pins one by one into each of the four wounds left by the first stage of the purge.
I heard someone approach…
What did I feel then? In my mind I was playing outside chasing bees when then, all of a sudden, I felt one land on my left shoulder, it was about to pierce its sting.
I remained impassive and helpless as I watched it, it stung me, but I didn't feel anything ... but its sting didn't seem to stop and continued and continued and continued to enter more and more inside my shoulder ...
"AHHhh!"
I heard a distant scream, who was it that was screaming?
I took my attention away from the bee that was stinging my left shoulder and looked at my right shoulder, there was another bee that was sticking its sting into me, then I looked at the top of my thighs, there too there were some bees intent on stinging me.
"AAAAAHHHHH!"
I heard an even louder scream coming from all around me.
It was a heartbreaking scream.
'Who's yelling?' I thought looking around.
I didn't see anyone, there was only me and twenty bees stinging me.
A doubt suddenly arose in my mind… what if it was me who was screaming?
As soon as this doubt came to me, all the pain that until now I had not felt burst throughout my body; it was as if all my limbs were being continuously pierced and torn, a pain that seemed endless, a pain that continued for a period that seemed eternal.
I felt that I was about to die, sometimes I felt my conscience drift away, away from the pain towards what seemed like eternal peace, yet I didn't want to die and so I fought every time to return to that unbearable pain, how much of that agony would I have to bear?
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The purge of the Bensomnerts was a practice conceived by the second patriarch Ludvik Bensomnert. His goal was to make his family without weakness by cutting off all unnecessary branches.
This made the descendants of the family into people with genetics that bordered on perfection.
Also, as word of this practice spread to surrounding kingdoms, the family's fame only increased.
What the young Bensomnert suffered was the 256 purge of family history. Over time the practice changed, perfecting itself in its monstrosity.
Each purge has three phases that must follow one another in a precise order…
First of all there is the stage called "tearing of wings", where the wings are obviously the individual's limbs. According to tradition at this stage a special drug must be given to the purged, a drug called Kinzek, a drug created by mixing the hallucinogenic blood of various animals and monsters together.
The second phase of the purge is called "Family Repudiation", in this phase, brothers and sisters of the purged will have to insert a total of 20 pins into the four wounds left by the severed limbs during the first phase. If one of the brothers or sisters of the purged refuses to stick a pin, he will be punished with 5 days of fasting.
The third phase is instead called "Fall into the Demomachia cave" and is based on throwing the now dying or already lifeless body of the purged into a cave teeming with venomous and ferocious monsters.
Demomachia combines the term demons with the suffix machia which means say battle, and as the term can already suggest this cave is famous for the continuous struggle of poisonous and bloodthirsty beasts for survival…
This is the third and final stage that the poor purged would have had to undergo… however most of the time the purged already dies during the first or second stage… cases where a purged survived to the third stage can be counted on the fingers of a hand…
However, even if you miraculously survive stage one and two, stage three will lead you to certain death…
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'I am still alive?' I wasn't sure, 'I'm still in pain, so I should still be alive…' I convinced myself of that.
After undergoing the first and second stages of the purge, I was wrapped up to my neck in gauze made from a downy material. I wanted to scratch all over, however, hahahahaha, I had no hands left, and no arms either, did they wrap me in such gauze for this? How nice…
I was going crazy, or maybe I had already gone crazy, I still had my eyes covered and now my mind was randomly generating images of something that maybe I had seen or maybe I had read.
I saw murder scenes I had read in the books they made me study… yes, the Bensomnerts give books like that to children to read, what crazy bastards…
I felt jolt, I heard the gallop of a horse, among my few lucid thoughts I realized that I was being transported to the cave where the third and final phase of the purge would take place, where I would surely die.
I could do nothing to change my fate and so my heart sank into a gloomy oppressive emptiness.
Minutes passed, perhaps hours, the time I perceived had been distorted for some time, perhaps since they cut off my left leg (or was it the right one?), the fact is that the horse slowly reduced its speed until it stopped.
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During the third phase of the purge, the poor fellow would have been wrapped in an itchy gauze and would have been carried on horseback in front of a well, called the "Entrance of Hell". This well was nothing more than a natural hole that descended dozens of meters until you reached a spacious hall of the Demomachia cave, dotted with stalagmites and stalactites (This according to the diary of the Third Patriarch, Folken Bensomnert, few have dared to enter this cave after him, and few have managed to return from the cave unharmed) .
After being carried to the well, the poor purge would be thrown inside, the few who had managed to reach this stage usually died from the fall.
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I was carelessly picked up by a man, or woman, by now even my senses were over-exhausted.
After a few steps I was grabbed by the hips, the hands that held me were strong but little, I was lifted up and then what was holding me released me and I began to fall, I knew my time had finally come, however I didn't want to die, I didn't want to!
Those seconds of fall seemed like an infinity to me, usually your life passes in front of you when you're about to die, however I had only lived for 6 years, what was I supposed to relive? Maybe something went through my mind but it didn't last that long for me to even notice it.
One beautiful memory came to my mind, the only person I had known who treated me like a human being. She was part of a branch of my family, she was a daughter of a Rook, her name was Hara Bensomnert, she was two years older than me and she never judged me for what I was… unlike me she was strong, she was already called a future Tower… just the opposite of me, yet she was the one who never judged my uselessness nor did she ever look at me with eyes of contempt… of course, we had never talked about anything seriously… but at least it was something… something…
'Something… someone… save me… I'm scared… it's dark… I can't see… I can't hear… someone… something… save me…'
*THUHM!
A thud vibrated throughout the room, I had touched the ground, or rather, I had crashed against it... more pain. I couldn't take it anymore. I felt sleepy.
The air inside the cave was humid and mild, the ground was cold, or maybe I was cold, maybe I didn't even fall, maybe I was just sleeping, "it was all a nightmare", I saw people with blurred faces waving at me, I was lying in a soft bed, "are those I see only now my real parents?"
I smiled…
'Ah… it was just a bad nightmare…' I stretched my arms in the air, trying to hug my real parents…
Unfortunately, however, what I had experienced in the last 6 years of my life was not a bad nightmare.
I was there, helpless, in the center of a room of the cave called "Demomachia", without any limb that I could stretch out and a few moments from death…