Canticle: Code Caligula

Chapter 47: One Way Ticket

*This chapter contains disturbing content/torture.

The pale spike was driven through Mura's heart with a resounding and sickening thump. Mura lurched back against his restraints in pain, nearly biting his tongue off as his teeth clinched together in shock. His eyes rolled back as his toes curled, legs spasming as the spike protruding from his naked chest pulsated grotesquely.

"Stings, doesn't it?" Nergal spoke, his voice croaking and empty. A smile began to stretch across his face as the defenseless man before him finally sputtered out a moan of pain as he regained his breath. With a full intake of air, Mura screamed out a bloodcurdling yell as tears welled in his eyes.

"Take your pain like a real man and suffer in silence," Nergal crooned, taking a sterile wad of bandages off the table and stuffing them into Mura's open mouth.

Despite the grievous wound caused by the arcane spike, not a single drop of blood seeped from the cavity. Mura's brain couldn't fathom the pain, nearly passing out twice from the attack. He looked down at the pale stake embedded in his heart, the fat end of it still visible outside his body. The runes were glowing blue, but a less vibrant shade than they were before.

He felt something odd throughout his body, primarily underneath his skin. The feeling was like his veins were being flushed with an uncomfortably warm fluid. The bizarre sensation began to numb his body and brain, taking the pain away for the time being.

Mura's eyelids flickered repeatedly as he gasped with labored breaths. He noticed something was changing with the arcane markings on the spike's surface. They were beginning to shift in color.

But that wasn't the only thing changing. Looking down at his bare arms, stomach and legs he saw that his skin tone was transforming from a lightly tan complexion to one more jaundice and sickly. It wasn't long before his skin was nearly a pale yellow, the blue network of veins beneath his flesh becoming incredibly apparent as seconds passed by.

—I'm dying... I'm going to die. He's killing me.

The once ocean-blue markings on the ivory stake were now crimson, like blood spilled from a freshly-severed artery. Mura's pupils shrunk as the whites of his eyes began to turn an unnatural shade of lavender. His frame convulsed as the stake finished pumping its ancient and ungodly magic into the demon's body.

"Now, Mura... You will know true agony."

Golden amber liquid oozed from Mura's mouth around the makeshift gag and trickled down from his nostrils. The once ivory spike was now shifting its color again, becoming black as a raven's shadow. It gurgled and seeped the same amber fluids from the wound in Mura's chest.

With a shudder, the arcane device began to sink further into Mura's body on its own volition. It disappeared within his flesh as the wound mysteriously repaired itself. Mura's skin reworked itself like putty, filling the hole made from the foreign object previously.

Nergal crossed his arms, a large toothy grin plastered across his face. He knew that the flesh was the first to be broken. With that, the final destination of pain would be the spirit itself.

Surely enough, the magical weapon was no longer within Mura's physical body. It had dissolved and penetrated Mura's very soul, wounding him in a way that would have been impossible through modern magic.

As the ebony talon stabbed his soul, Mura felt any thoughts he had vanish. His consciousness faded at last, but somewhere deep within, he felt a pang of darkness flood his being. Even after blacking out, he could feel this new pain within a fragment of his brain.