The Legend of the Hunter
Epilogue

Ragar was slightly surprised that he was still alive after weeks of torture at the hands of the crazed Silent One, Hruss. The man had brought Ragar to this secret cove nestled along the eastern coast, a bay so hidden that the Thug was surprised that the Silent One even knew of its existence.

The bay looked out upon the North Sea from a naturally formed inlet tucked under an overhanging wedge of rock that jutted out from one of the ridges of the Phoenix Mountains. The view of the nearly crystal clear green waters was spectacular, and the open sea was a tormenting invitation of freedom to the captive Ragar. In any event, Ragar mused, his body was too far gone to allow him to attempt an escape, which was probably why Hruss had ceased to tie him up anymore.

The torture had unsurprisingly started with the pulling of nails, something Ragar himself would have begun with, and then it had progressed to more excruciating acts. In spite of himself and the fact that he was at the receiving end of these cruelties, Ragar grudgingly started to admire the Silent One’s skills. The man knew instinctively when he had brought Ragar to the very precipice of death or unconsciousness, and would halt his ministrations with exquisite timing. Not once had his methods of torture caused Ragar to faint.

Hruss spoke not a single word to the Thug, as was expected since he suffered from such a debilitating speech defect, thus Ragar was forced to carry their conversations. The Thug was by nature loquacious and was incapable of staying silent during the “sessions”. Between grunts, gasps and shouts, Ragar kept up a steady flow of one-liners or insults. He didn’t care that these seemed to increase the intensity of the torture as Hruss became more enraged.

“You know, if you had used a blunt knife to cut off my little finger, you could have extracted more pain from me and greater pleasure for yourself,” Ragar told Hruss on one occasion. His comment back-fired on him though when Hruss actually took his advice the next time he decided to cut something off the Thug’s body. But Ragar just couldn’t hold his tongue.

The strange event that brought an end to his torture and Hruss occurred on one such night, when Hruss had followed Ragar’s thoughtless suggestion to use hot honey instead of a burning poker to inflict some pain. Hruss had thoroughly enjoyed himself as he poured the lava-hot, sticky honey over Ragar’s testicles. Ironically, that was the first and only time the Thug had come closest to passing out. Later, as he was lying gingerly on his straw mat, attempting to recover from his ordeal while Hruss was in a dead drunk stupor, Ragar saw an unusual creature crawl heavily from the ocean. It was nearly two hours past midnight and Ragar was too drained to sleep and in piercing agony, thus he initially assumed he was hallucinating. It was when the stench of rot and decay assaulted his nostrils that he realised that what he was witnessing was no phantasm.

The creature had a sinuous, thick, elongated body to which were attached two short front and two extended hind limbs. These ended in vicious-looking talons that resembled sharpened blades. The creature’s head was triangular in shape with yellow eyes that had abyss-black slits. The mouth was a wide slash that stretched from one pointy ear to the other, and it flicked out a deep purple forked tongue to taste the air. Unfortunately, it tasted Ragar’s scent, too. The sea monster’s entire body was covered in thick plates that displayed a miasma of colours, with reds and green being the most prominent. It resembled a piece of rotten meat, and it stank just as badly.

As the creature’s putrid scent reached Hruss, the Silent One jerked upright out of his sleep to stare in horror and disbelief at the nightmare looming over them. Ragar had just enough time to utter one final comment before both he and his torturer were ignominiously and ravenously devoured.

“There goes the neighbourhood.”

THE END

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