For Peace

15. Amen

Gore warning

******

Searing pain startled Seonghwa awake. It rooted at the centre of his palm and shot up the length of his arm like a strike of lightning. The pain was so overwhelming that his throat formed a cry on instinct and it broke over his chapped lips as his eyes shot open in agony.

The world was tilted. Instead of lying down and aligning with its ground, he regarded the sky and the trees as if he were standing up. It was still night - or again? - and a fire crackling nearby bathed him in what should have been a soothing glow.

Before Seonghwa got to identify the source of pain, movement in front of him caught his cry in his throat. Red hair bathed in the metallic stench of blood cascaded over the woman's dark shoulders. Her tusks grimly framed her lips and matched her frown. The leather and fur of her clothes were soundless as she wielded a heavy hammer.

She was far enough below Seonghwa that the priest wondered how he looked down on their naturally tall kin. She even stood on a crate.

When it dawned on him that his feet didn't touch the ground and a wooden beam behind him kept him in position, his eyes widened. His stretched arms opened like the wings of a bird, but his legs were kept in place under his nude body.

Suddenly, it all clicked.

The next moment, the Red's hammer came down, driving the nail through Seonghwa's hand and into the cross he was suspended against.

Seonghwa's blood-curdling scream echoed through the forest, but there were no birds to startle out of the trees. The Reds had taken over this area, and no living creature was foolish enough to stay near.

Nauseous with pain, Seonghwa took in their number. Almost a dozen of them milled around the camp, invading their camp. How had no one seen them coming?

Blood trickled down Seonghwa's wrist and side, leaving a trail of crimson. Like Christ himself, he hung on the wobbly cross, bearing nothing but his necklace on his body that still tingled from Hongjoong's touch.

The woman stepped back from him with a satisfied grin. She said something in their language, rough like the bark of a dog.

Seonghwa's stomach churned when he looked at his body. The nails were brutally hammered through his palms, keeping him attached to the horizontal beam behind him. The tension of his weight strained in his shoulders, for the nails would rip through his skin if he drooped.

The work was askew and careless, a blatant mockery of Christ's suffering on the cross. The nail keeping his feet pressed to the cross was so crooked it almost didn't connect to the wood.

Everything was pain.

Seonghwa's stomach convulsed, but his difficulty to breathe under the strain of his torso kept him from throwing up. For a moment, he waned between consciousness and succumbing to the darkness that would deliver him from this misery.

His sense of urgency kept him awake. He would die if he fainted now and though that might be better than to lose his mind to agony at the cross, he wasn't the only one in this camp tonight. Even if the Reds had found only him and not their main settling nearby, there had to be at least one other person.

Weak eyes searched the forest. Seonghwa was barely coherent to care about himself, but his shock momentarily pushed the horror of his situation aside. His friends were most important. When his sluggish eyes found two cages to his right, they cleared at the sight of the bodies slumped in there.

The left one seemed sturdier, made of a peculiar material that appeared magical by the eye alone. It held the slumped bodies of the witch and the gargoyle, twisted into each other to accommodate the stifling wings. Hongjoong was still out of it, but Mingi tried to push himself up with lethargic hands. He seemed drained of all his might and he had lost his crown as they had stuffed him into the cage.