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“I have brought you here like you asked,” the Ferryman sneered in an ethereal voice. “Now you are on your own.”
He threw his hood back up and calmly placed his staff in the water, pushing away from the bank. His laughter faded as he floated downstream, like he thought scaring us was the funniest thing in the world.
Talia placed her hand over her racing heart. “I don’t think I like that guy.”
Lucas turned to face the path. “He got us to where we need to be. That has to count for something.”
I shivered, glancing around the damp forest. I couldn’t see much past the thick fog. “I don’t like this place.”
Chloe started forward, her shoes making a squishing sound in the mud. “The sooner we get moving, the sooner we can get out of here.”
Lucas took my hand, and he kept me close as we followed behind Chloe. An eerie chill traveled down my back as we made our way through the forest, past swampy puddles and gnarly trees with no leaves on their branches. The sound of screams came from up ahead. Talia hesitated and curled closer to Grant.
“Remember what the Ferryman said,” Grant assured her. “These people are torturing themselves. We should be safe.”
He sounded uncertain, and I felt that deep within my gut. We didn’t actually know what we were getting ourselves into here. This was the witches’ hell, and that meant it was made for those of our kind. We needed to be more careful here than anywhere else.
The screams became louder the further we walked. Ahead, figures took shape behind the fog. Just off the path, a man with dark hair lay on a wooden table, strapped down by shackles. A small metal cage with no bottom and rats inside had been placed on his abdomen. Another man with a crooked nose shoveled coals from a nearby fire pit and hovered the coals above the top of the cage.
“No, please!” the man on the table begged.
“You did this to me, so now I get to do this to you,” the man with the crooked nose sneered.
He placed the coals atop the cage. In a desperate attempt to escape the heat, the rats began burrowing downward, into the captive man’s stomach. He screamed, his tortured cries filling the forest.
“Stop!” Lucas and I cried at the same time.
Lucas moved before I could. He sprinted through the trees, tossing the rat cage to the ground. The rats scattered, scampering away. The man’s abdomen was torn and bloody, and it made me want to hurl.
“Leave him alone!” Lucas raged.
“Who made you king of the Abyss?” the man on the table snapped. “This is what I deserve!”
Lucas stumbled back a step. “You… want this?”
“Yes,” the man with the coals sneered. “He deserves it. You want to be next?”
“Get out of here,” the dark-haired man growled at Lucas, before turning back to his torturer. “Let’s get this over with.”
The torturer grabbed a piece of wood off a nearby table and began shoving splinters under the other man’s fingernails. My stomach twisted, and I willed myself to look away, but I couldn’t stop watching the horrible scene. When the man finished with the splinters, he took an ancient pair of pliers and began pulling off the man’s fingernails.
Lucas returned to my side, shaking his head hopelessly. “I can’t stop it.”
“We’re not here to change these people’s minds,” Chloe reminded him. “We’re here to get the Oaken Wands, and that’s it. We can’t stop this torture if they want it to happen.”
The sound of shackles clanging together met my ears, and I dared to turn my gaze back to the tortured man. His torturer had let him go. He was in so much pain that he stumbled to the ground, before pulling himself upright and grabbing his torturer by the hair.
“Let’s see how you like the pyre!” he roared.
The torturer whimpered, and it became clear in that moment that the two had swapped roles. The dark-haired man dragged the other man through the trees.
“Where’s he taking him?” Talia wondered.
We kept to the path, but we eyed the men through the trees. The dark-haired man pulled the man with the crooked nose onto a platform with a stake in the center. Dry branches surrounded him at every angle. The dark-haired man tied him up, then stepped back and watched with a smile as the brush lit aflame on its own. The man with the crooked nose screamed as flesh melted from his skin. Each time the skin fell off, another patch of fresh skin would replace it. He could burn for all eternity like this.
I turned away. I couldn’t watch any longer.
Lucas shuddered. “It’s just like the reaper Edgar described. I just never thought we’d be the ones torturing each other.”
