“Amen!”

The Werwulf Trials  was brutal. It would always be filled with blood.

Reiner Stumpp’s wail for forgiveness, for help, in fear, in pain etched on his mind. Beads of sweat flowed from his temple as the scene pulled buried memories from his head. The familiar screams suddenly sounded like his father’s. The murky sky suddenly seemed like it was the same skies above him a year ago.

The clergyman slowly pulled Stumpp’s skin from different parts of his body. The first was from his arms. Flaming hot pincers pinched the skin lying on his wrist. With a flick of a hand, the skin started to separate from flesh and blood started flowing down his limbs. The skin underneath his feet followed. Klerien almost looked away from the antagonizing screams that reverberated in the air.

No one uttered a single syllable. Hemlock overflowed with screams from the trial. Fire ignited in his chest, it burned and danced. The need for retribution consumed and suffocated him.

Klerien’s throat contracted while his lungs refused to take in his much-needed air. His heart thundered under his ribcage as he saw Stumpp’s skin lying on the platform’s floor. Blood dripped down the wheel and the now, cold but red pincers. Reiner Stumpp didn’t look like a human anymore. His flesh displayed in front of a hundred people. Some of his large veins pulsed and throbbed from his proximity.

He seemed dead; however, a human’s body wasn’t that fragile. A man wearing a robe walked towards the clergyman. His left-hand carried a cross and the other held a club pounded with nails. The vicars weren’t satisfied with just skinning him alive, it seemed. Now, they wanted to show a more severe form of violence to display the consequences of his supposed sins. They would beat him until his bones broke.

“Satan, leave this man’s body! Accept retribution from God’s children and begone!” The man shouted, pointing the cross on Stumpp’s chest. Klerien heard the same sentence a mere year ago. His head pounded while a warm sensation covered his body. It was the hot flames of his wrath.

“I will find the truth about my father.” He hissed under his breath. Klerien thought that mysteries hid the truth behind the trials and he would uncover those. He spent months grieving and he’s done.

“No! Please, I’ve done nothing wrong! It was him e-” It was Reiner Stumpp’s last words. Horrifying and indistinguishable sounds emitted from his mouth. The spiked club would sometimes hit the wheel but most of the time, it pounded Stumpp’s flesh and bones. Sounds of cracking bones and squelching flesh accompanied his screams.

After seemingly a thousand pounding, murmurs resounded from the crowd. Stumpp’s deformed body looked like pounded meat. His limbs twisted in unnatural ways. His flesh, a combination of red, white, and peach. Some areas of his body, mostly on his stomach, had nails that hooked itself underneath his skin. Klerien took a deep breath as another man climbed the platform. His teeth clenched, and his fingers twitched. He knows the man.

It was the same man that beheaded his father.

A sickening sensation crawled on Klerien’s stomach. The man displayed a proud smirk on his hidden and shadowed face. Murmurs settled and once again, he came back at that time. The man carried a large axe. Klerien already knew what would happen next.

He refused to look away. Last time, he did. This time, he wouldn’t.

Never again...

After fifteen minutes, Reiner Stumpp’s severed head rolled down the platform. At the same time, his wife and daughter burned at the stake. Their wails rivalled Stumpp’s screams. The smell of burning flesh covered the grounds causing some to throw up. It covered the apparent scent of dirt and dust. It smelt like burning hair with traces of burning meat which in turn was unexplainably unpleasant. It filled the air with the smell of burning clothes and an earthy smell.

“Lord, preserve your people!” The crowd started praying with the clergyman. Klerien felt his insides trying to crawl out from his throat by the sight of them. “Lord, preserve your people!”

Their hands rose up in the air, like they’re offering themselves. “Maintain righteous government everywhere, so that all things may take place in an orderly way!”

“And peace may not be destroyed by revolution or secret enmity,” He silently watched as the people pray to their God, feigning innocence like they did not just publicly tortured a fellow human.

“Nor the eternal good order, be corrupted by debased living or disturbed by other offences!” They are mad.

“Amen!”

“Amen!”

The unforgettable scent clung in the air and his skin. It lodged itself deep in his nasal passage. The awful smell haunted him; however, Klerien stood his place without flinching as the trials ended.

Future plans ran in his head before turning around. “Tomorrow, start gathering information about the latest trials. I am certain that they won’t be able to erase everything from an early date,” Klerien murmured at the smaller figure that approached him while Stumpp was being pounded. Without a word, he pulled a pouch from his satchel and handed it to Carmine.