A person’s calling could occur to an individual at any point in their life. Sometimes it occurred early, before discovery, and one sought it out. One pursued the dream, in furtherence of their desire. Othertimes the passion was revealed in a flash of inspiration in the first blush of practical experience. The latter was such a case with Woe. He’d discovered a penchant for sadism late in life, relatively speaking. Being prompted by Erastus, his former master, to join the jailers profession. The suggestion came with a recommendation of course, and Erastus’ word did, Woe found, hold frightening sway in the lowest of the low places of Andaris.
The webspinner and former slave wouldn’t have thought so, to know Erastus and his irritable manner. His abrasive mood swings in the process of running his tannery and slave driving businesses. Really, though, the tannery and labor mill were one in the same. For all his faults, Erastus knew how to run a business, which gave rise to the credence that perhaps there was more to him than met the eye. Perhaps he just had the right friends. Who knew?
Woe only knew that this work suited him, almost so much as to be unsettling. He’d never experienced a desire to harm other people in his youth, nor animals, or any of the stereotypical behaviors that one often assigned to the depraved. Some might have even considered and thought of him as sweet, and innocent. Sweet for a webspinner; a sure disappointment to his cult.
Thus he’d been for much of his life, ignorant of the hidden passion for inflicting pain that ran deep in his bones. There was something about it, having them bound, and helpless that spoke to a primal side of his soul. As if he was not just a webspinner cultist, but a spider down in his core. Yet he was only to observe for now, and only participated when bid by the senior torturer he was paired to, for the time to learn the trade.
His name was Kraig, Kraig Butcher. He preferred the antiquated title Carnifex to jailer, executioner, torturer. He had told Woe, when asked, that it was always best to put one’s best foot forward. Thus he assigned a distinguished and venerable title to what he did. It made everything about the job more professional, less a meal ticket that one did for a long series of hours everyday and then went home. One must take pride in their actions, in their profession. One must hold their chin high, whether a refuse cleaner in the street, a rat catcher, a barber, or a butcher. At least until etiquette bid they lower their gaze, as they must even when torturing members of knighthoods and quasi-nobility.
“So stop moping around, you miserable sod.” He slapped the younger man on the shoulder. Then he left him behind, to observe as he did his act for the crowd. It was a public execution day. Someone who’d done a great crime against the sovereign was being put to death. They said it was a great crime, but the King nor any member of royalty or nobility was anywhere to be seen. Woe inferred that it was merely something that was said of most condemned men, and so his confusion cleared.
Woe watched his senior comrade at his act, at his art as the other man saw it. Kraig was a man of many graces, and handsome. Many of the ladies in the crowd gave him suggestive glances, although the young man not yet found out if they’d led to any dalliances. Kraig was tall, like Woe, but with bleach white hair and classically strong features. The way he danced with a blade, and put on a show for each public execution was something to admire, Woe had to admit. The way he danced with his executioner’s blade was something that he couldn’t help but admire.
Woe didn’t know if he’d put on quite as much of a show when it came time for his turn to put prisoners to death. Kraig often said that if there’s a crowd, there must be a show. The crowd, save perhaps the bereived relatives of the condemned person, loved a show. The weaving of the blade in and out of his arms, and then the final nick, and a capering dance with the head rolling, and spurting blood onto the scaffold.
Woe had to flinch, even as the blade met the neck of the condemned. But he didn't immediately look away.
A confluence of blood flowed to the scaffold, dripping into the earth. The world didn’t wretch up traitor or criminal blood. It didn’t revolt with tremors and flowing magma and steam geysers. It accepted the blood same as any noble’s, same as any knight or commoner. Idalos stood indifferent to the suffering of its creatures, as ever.
Woe turned away from the scene after a few bits, as Kraig got into his routine of capering and dancing for the crowd, playing with the severed head as he did so. Woe had little taste for the show, little enough for execution in and of itself. He much preferred living to the dead.
Breaks later, Woe was alone with Kraig in their dormitory-like barracks. Each senior torturer had a set of juniors beneath them, but so far Kraig only had Woe. He was assured that more would join in the subsequent days, perhaps the Iron Hand would contribute some squires to the jail duty, and they would be relegated to Kraig’s care. In either event, Woe was glad that their living situation wasn’t very crowded.
“How now, Sadness?” Kraig asked with a sanguine grin. Woe looked up at him.
“I watched you at work today, and I’m not sure about something.” The young man was currently cleaning a scourge that had been put to heavy use. Untangling the cordage from itself as much as the visceral matter left on it. “Why the show?”
“The show?” Kraig quirked a brow.
“The dance, the playing with the sword, the head, all of it?” Woe frowned, putting aside the newly untanged scourge with ginger care on its shelf. “It seems, unnecessary.”
Kraig laughed, as he pulled the clean executioner sword from its spot on the wall. He stretched his arms, and for a moment Woe wondered whether he was doing some ritual exercise or… something. But then he placed the end of the sword against the stone floor, and pulled Woe up from his seat.
He began dancing with Woe, pulling him into a contentious dance, an entry level tango. It felt strange, dancing with a man leading him. His dances… well Woe had only ever been to one, but they were quite different from this one, the line of the executioner sword between them. Woe’s skin grazed the edge of the sword, and he noted that it was mostly dull, not very sharp at all.
He twisted Woe in his arms as they strolled across the barracks dormitory, the limited space that was available. Kraig was laughing at Woe’s unsmiling face. The look on it must have been precious, at the time. But then Kraig had always been easy with laughs.
“What is necessary in life, Woe. Will you tell me that?”
“What?” Woe breathed as the pace of the dance began to accelerate, “I… Food, sleep, shelter, water? In no particular order.” The young man retorted.
Kraig laughed louder, as he spun Woe out and then back in, keeping Woe’s back to his front as the executioner sword was an ever-present divider between them, and now a uncomfortable cold steel rail against Woe’s back. “So life can be boiled down to that for you, what is necessary, the bare minimum?”
Woe frowned, as the dance continued unabated. He was tiring both mentally and physically by this point, and wanted to escape but Kraig’s pull was undeniable. In his dancing skill, he had Woe caught in a web of sorts.
“What do you think?” Woe asked, “Many can scarcely find or afford even that much? Who the hell are you Kraig? Some pampered libertine noble? I’m sorry that you’ve never known want enough to see those four things as being ‘enough’.”
“Never said that.” Kraig shot back, “Yet what are mortals, except animals, if they can’t dream?”
Woe was growing tired of the comparisons and strange philosophizing that his senior was trying to instill in him. He didn’t like it much, and wanted to remove himself from the lesson. Both the dance and the rhetoric. “Stop.”
Kraig pushed himself into a kiss with Woe then, as he pressed him against the wall. For a moment through the kiss, Woe forgot about the philosophizing, the dance on the scaffold, and the dance in the barracks. There was only him and Kraig’s lips playing upon each other. Then he pushed the senior off of him. He shot a glare at him, and then stormed out of the barracks.
“Oh come on.” Kraig called after him, but Woe ignored it.
