Being intoxicated by his own prey’s black energy, Vermon was the hunter, who was about to enjoy himself in that locked room. He walked over to the middle of the room behind the pillar and regarded Orb with the same cold eyes.

“Come,” he spoke in the same cold tone.

Vermon wasted no time; feeling Orb’s hesitation and reluctance to respond, he formed red chains by condensing Uthusian energy in his hand, which Orb recognized immediately as the same chains Vermon used to restrain him at the Carnival of Shadows.

With an impressive speed, the chain was released toward Orb, who stood helpless in front of the window, and like a snake it wrapped itself around Orb’s body and yanked him to the disciplinary pillar.

The chains completed a full but quick wrap around the wooden pillar, binding Orb’s entire body save his head and calves.

Orb was in a state of complete shock, for at first, he showed no reaction and resistance as Vermon gave him a false sense of safety.

He could not see Vermon well in these seconds as he flew to hit the pillar violently and be tied to it.

However, when his chest and forehead hit the wooden pillar painfully, it took him a few seconds to realize that he was completely chained to the fearful disciplinary pillar.

Vermon finally decided to discipline him like his former slaves, who tasted great and possibly unspeakable affliction around the dreaded pillar.

Orb felt cold chills throughout his whole body and was unsure whether it was because of the cold or his fear.

“What are you doing? Release me!” he protested. The harder Orb struggled, the tighter the chain wound around him.

“You can defy me, Orb, but you must know that you will be punished in return.”

Vermon spoke as he walked over to where Orb slept, took the pillow in his hand, removed its case, and tossed it aside. Vermon then stood behind Orb and covered his face with the dirty white fabric.

Seeing the white pillowcase covering his face, Orb stopped struggling for a moment in bewilderment.

Although he was partially blind, the idea of enveloping his face to block his vision and breathing through a cloth, even as a joke, frightened him.

“No. No. Stop!” Orb has always hated the feeling of suffocation in any form.

Restricting the movement of his limbs to a pillar with chains was a punishment by itself, and to receive a brutal lashing from Vermon’s whip was another horrific punishment for him, especially since his old wounds had not fully healed.

“Don’t— do this to me,” Orb panted, as he could smell the dust from the very fabric, he used last night to sweep the floor.

Vermon ignored Orb’s trembling voice and said, “Why do you act like you have completely recovered, my foolish slave? Why don’t you accept my help quietly and be grateful?”

Orb struggled again, but the chain squeezed his flesh hard until he gasped for air.

“The more you struggle, the more I squeeze. So stop acting arrogantly and doing what you please,” Vermon gazed at the chained body in front of him.

Then he got down on one knee behind Orb, removed the ropes off his legs, and folded his pants to his knees, exposing his emaciated lower legs while adding, “I wonder if you are acting high and mighty just because you have had special treatment from my friend, the Crown Prince of Arkosia.”

“S—stop, what are you going to do?” Shouted Orb with apprehension he could not hide.

“Since your blood is still poisoned, fever may return at any time, yet you reject my generous attempts as your master to help you and insult me by drinking medicine just to vomit deliberately!”

“I did not do it on purpose!”

Disregarding Orb’s words, Vermon straightened up and retorted, “Stop lying.”

“I am not!”

“From now on, I will not force you to take medication, but I will punish you every time you disobey me,” Vermon firmly said, still standing, “and you’ll be held accountable for your actions.”

“Free me! Vermon, I’m feeling cold.”

Orb felt strangely cold at that moment and tried to clarify how he felt to Vermon, who still did not believe him and thought he was just acting pitiful.

Vermon leaned toward Orb, saying in a cold tone again, “See? You are not only lying but calling me ‘Vermon’ instead of master! My slave, why do you insist on lying and disrespecting me?”

“...”

Orb was breathing quickly and loudly through his mouth to the point where the fabric was getting sucked in and wet every time he inhaled.

Orb’s contracted eyebrows, his sweaty face, and his trembling lips were invisible to Vermon, who stood watching Orb’s desperate attempts to rid himself of the restricting chain and his clear discomfort as the pressure on his body increased.

Once again, Orb felt the chain squeezing him to a point where his internal organs hurt. He yelled, panting and roaring out a demand he should not.

“DON’T IGNORE ME, VERMON!”

“DON’T DISRESPECT ME, ORB!”

Vermon yelled as well. His wide, angry eyes scanned Orb’s veiled face as he moved to stand opposite him. He felt pleasure at hearing Orb’s panting and his almost suppressed whimpers. Vermon also felt pleasure at seeing the wet circle on the fabric around Orb’s mouth and the sweat sliding down his burned neck onto his chest.

Unable to see, Orb imagined his tormentor sneering, so he shouted again, “Is this a new way of toying with me? Punish me! Come on, punish me! What are you waiting for?”

“Whoa! I’ve never witnessed a slave asking for punishment and rushing it!” Vermon retorted in a cruel, icy tone, “Orb, I AM punishing you.”

Despite his feeling cold, Orb sweated profusely on his head, back, and clutched hands as he listened to Vermon’s words. “Is it not enough? Are you asking me for more?”

There was a moment of silence.

“Did you miss Honsinu[1]?”

Terror welled up inside Orb and made his stomach clench at the icy tone of Vermon.

“Hon—sinu? What is that?”

***

Vermon then took out his whip, raised his hand and waved the weapon fiercely into the air before landing a cracking sound with one blow on the ground to terrify Orb.

He saw Orb flinch and enjoyed bullying, pressuring, and tormenting him this way more than anything else. “Does it ring a bell to you?” Vermon sounded mocking.

He smirked before landing one blow on Orb’s calves. That one blow was so painful for Orb that he gasped while convulsing in apparent pain. 

Vermon deliberately used the handle, not the leather strips, as they were designed to automatically absorb his Uthusian energy and form spikes, metal hooks, or small bones while landing on the target’s flesh to tear it open mercilessly. It happened the first time he lashed Orb in the Fountain Square, and he did not wish that to happen again.

Vermon stood still behind Orb, examining his trembling calves and twisted toes, and listening in ecstasy to his slave’s panting.

He could tell that Orb was struggling to suppress his whimpers and the convulsions of his body. Knowing that intensified his sense of pleasure, for he knew he was winning against his wild wolf.

Vermon was nearly done breaking Orb’s spirit, as the slave was chained to a thin pole, muffled with a dirty pillowcase, scoffed at, ignored, and beaten.

In addition to all that, Orb was experiencing a constant discomfort in his left eye, which had begun watering and tearing involuntarily since Vermon covered his face. The desire to scratch it grew stronger by the second and left him extremely frustrated.

Orb did not argue at all after the cold threats of Vermon and his first flogging. He preoccupied himself with trying to stifle his whimpers and restraining his sniffles while receiving several more painful floggings on his exposed calves.

Vermon continued beating Orb. “One, for lying to me. Two, for defying me. Three, for not cleaning my inner courtyard on time,” Vermon went on counting and stating Orb’s offences with every blow, “Four, for vomiting the medicine I gave you. Five, for not addressing me as your master …” the flogging went on for some time.

Yet, using the wooden handle, Vermon did not overdo it or exert much force while hitting Orb because he did not want to call his own physician Luba again to treat his injuries. Vermon only wanted to scare Orb and made sure to discipline him without tearing his flesh open.

When Vermon was content with torturing his prey, he stopped flogging his legs and immediately disappeared from the room without saying a word, turning back, or even unbinding him.

He left Orb chained, muffled, agonized, and sniffling while trembling in pain and cold.

Several minutes passed when Orb found out he was left in that state alone. “VERMON,” he shouted, frustrated, “RELEASE ME.”

For some time, Orb struggled to breathe. Feeling the chain’s pressure increasing as he moved, he gave up and rested his head on the wooden pillar opposite him.

He was exhausted from his constant struggle to free himself.

He was tremendously hurt for being chained, veiled, flogged, terrified, and left alone, with his legs painfully throbbing.

He resumed calling out for Vermon in despair.

“Vermon,” he panted.

“Vermon,” he panted again.

“Vermon…”

His forehead was still resting on the pillar when some distorted images rose in his mind from his distant past. He was muffled in the same manner with a red veil. He was slapped and kicked inside a large wooden box. He was wet with sweat, urine, and tears. Someone was shouting at him with hatred, “DIE, MONSTER!”

Orb experienced a pulsing sensation in his head over and over again. The seal of Uthus was acting viciously, shocking and restraining his mind and muscles again. Yet, his sweating and trembling body had a memory and a will of its own.

This time his body defied the seal of Uthus and relived the physical symptoms which were associated with one unpleasant incident he experienced years ago, of being alone, confined, hurt, and scared.

Being cursed with this condition, unfortunately, Orb had no control over it. When his body is hurt and sometimes threatened, it randomly revives physical symptoms associated with similar past experiences.

People often witnessed Orb suffer sudden open wounds, inflamed cuts, broken bones, bruised muscles, torn flesh, and other injuries for no apparent reason. They genuinely believed that he was possessed by a demon who inflicted those injuries on him. Little did they know that Orb’s body could revive old injuries and renew his physical and mental suffering when distressed.

Hence, at that moment, Orb tried to resist the revival of an old incident’s symptoms. His turbulent and accelerated heartbeat made him feel as if his chest was about to explode at any moment. It’s unbearable, he panted. His cheeks went numb after feeling the two slaps they received. Don’t do this to me, he panted again.

Orb gasped and grimaced in pain after feeling the nasty kick in his stomach. He cried because of the humiliation he felt as his pants got wet. No. Please, not again. The liquid his body released felt warm against his cold skin and dripped from his white pants.

Orb felt a cold current of energy flowing from his body profusely, causing a new pulsing pain in every inch of his body and a stabbing feeling in his heart. He could not stop the stream of tears and his whimpering.

“It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.”

Orb then screamed in frustration and pain as his trembling body channeled the cold current uncontrollably into the pillar and completely swept it to the top before spreading through the ceiling like flames and disappearing in a second.

Following that soundless explosion of energy above him, small green buds began to pop out of the pillar with rapidity and abundance.

Some of them grew speedily into thick twigs, large and intertwined, climbing the walls, the pillar, and the window frames.

The sudden transformation of the entire pillar into a thin tree trunk with leafy branches that spread around and protected Orb with a strong yet gentle embrace did not alarm Huhu, who was lying idle outside. Huhu did not bother to move and check on Orb even after hearing his scream a few seconds ago, as he believed that his master had not finished disciplining Orb yet.

No one was there when Orb changed the entire place with his unstable energy in a few seconds and freed himself from Vermon’s chain.

Feeling exhausted and unable to move his limbs or remove the fabric from his face, Orb fell helplessly over a branch beneath him for a moment. He fell again and remained flat on the floor with weariness creeping over him until he fell asleep.

***

That evening, suspecting that her master had tied Orb to the pillar and tortured him, Riecho went to the isolation room to check on Orb.

She believed he was not yet ready to receive any physical punishment, as the news of him getting lashed and poisoned at the Carnival of Shadows reached her prior to his return. 

Being the only one among the servants who genuinely worried about him, she decided to speak to her master after checking on Orb and persuade him to allow her to undertake the task of feeding Orb the medicine herself instead of her master.

However, the moment Riecho unlocked the isolation room door and entered, she stood dumbfounded. Without making a fuss, she left immediately to notify her master, who had spent his day out and just returned home.

She found Vermon standing alone in the corridor and staring at the dark sky dejectedly. Next to his resting elbows, his white gloves were blood-stained and draped over the banisters.

She walked over to him, stood two meters away, and said impassively, as always, while folding her hands firmly in front of her, “Master, there is a tree in the isolation room.”

Vermon turned to her, unsure of what he heard.

“What?” He said.

Riecho stared at thin veins of blood dripping off his fingers. Bleeding hands, again. What happened to him?

“I just checked on Orb, Master. I think it is his doing.”

***

End of Chapter (23)

 NOTES

[1] Vermon’s whip. [Pronunciation Guide: Hon (as in the word home) Sinu (as in avenue)]