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Two cultures of punishment
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Adam placed his hands on either side of Kera's head. He began to concentrate, a sense of heavy focus in his dark eyes. It was almost as if he were looking through her.
“Each piece of these blades will be a strip of your soul,” he said softly. "When we are done here, you will have learned your True Name."
Kera felt as if something inside of her was welling up to the surface. It was like watching the swell of a wave from the shore. Instead of yielding, the wave exploded through her essence as Adam’s hands withdrew from her head.
Kera screamed. Bright flashes of light spidered across her vision. Her ears rang with the sound of her own voice and a sense of vertigo overtook her, sending her reeling against her own equilibrium, spiraling through nothingness, falling.
Kera dropped to her knees, holding her head. It was as if someone was trying to whisper something whilst screaming into her ear. The sound echoed through her head, strange and familiar, like the sound of an old friend calling her name, but she couldn't understand. The pain was blinding and seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at all. It was as if she were being burned alive from the inside.
She fell forward onto her hands and knees, panting, trying desperately to catch her breath. The bright flashes danced through the veining in the stone floor. When she looked up, Adam stood at the forge. He was not a tall man, but today he seemed to tower high above her; taller, elder, stronger. And what was he working with? He held what might as well have been a thin piece of glass in his hands.
Laying the material across the block, Adam knelt and looked down at Kera.
"Kera." He said in a firm tone, as if to call her back from far away.
She coughed. Her throat was dry...
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...d onto her side, covering her face with her hands. She was cold but her hair was soaked with sweat and her throat burned as if she’d swallowed hot embers.
Adam knelt and held a stone cup for her to drink from. It soothed her throat and quenched her desperate thirst.
"Are you ready to go again?" He asked when she was able to hold the cup on her own.
Kera drained the cup and gave it back to him, wiping away the strands of hair that stuck to the sweat and tears on her face. She coughed and then nodded, bracing herself for what she knew was to come.
“Yes,”
Adam nodded as he set the cup aside and took up the hammer. “This is going to hurt.”
The pounding of the hammer resounded like thunder, sending her reeling again. The pain was exquisite, cleansing, sacred. And for the first time, in the 5 long years since Lucian’s death, she truly felt alive.
Kera screamed.
The night was tempestuous and my emotions were subtle, like the flame upon a torch. They blew out at the same time that my sense of tranquility dispersed, as if the winds had simply come and gone. The shrill scream of a young girl ricocheted off the walls and for a few brief seconds, it was the only sound that I could hear. It was then that the waves of turmoil commenced to crash upon me. It seemed as though every last one of my senses were succumbed to disperse from my reach completely. As everything blurred, I could just barely make out the slam of a door from somewhere alongside me and soon, the only thing that was left in its place was an ominous silence.
...ferent person. Her eyes were shut and her mouth was gaping as she spasmodically gasped for air.
She sat there silently, taking in the chaos that surrounded her. Her village now in smoldering ruins as the sun came up. She sat amongst the rubble, covered in sweat and soot, still numb from what she experienced the night before. It happened so quickly there was no time to react. The marauders came late and in such force, there was no time to do anything and nowhere to run. All around her in the darkness, she could hear the cries of her people and the maniacal laughter of the warring tribesman who had come to kill them all without any thought of mercy.
As a result, she met emotions she did not think existed, felt a huge hollow and felt like a walking dead. Her confused days and sleepless nights became a ritual; therefore, the only life she knows was a torturous hell
Her lungs burnt and her breath caught in her throat. Every second she wasted was a second closer to losing him. Then she saw him, a distorted shadow in the moonlight. She cried out his name again through chapped lips. Tears pooled in her eyes, like a gentle ocean resembling her bleeding heart. Mascara smudged around her cheeks like charcoal. She stumbled forwards, her legs threatening to give way. Rough edged rocks tore at her clothes, slashing her trousers like something in a horror movie. But she had to keep going. After all they had been through, she couldn’t lose him now. Not
"for any second there was sure to be a violent explosion in her brain..."(205). She compares the pain in her head to an explosion to create a visual of what her pain was like
Henry placed his hand under her chin and lifted her head. “One more level to go. Soon your pain will be over,” Henry said, and kissed her on the forehead.
They sat in silence for about a minute, Thomas’s eyes piercing the back of her head as she focused intently at the wall to the right of them. She knew she could not avoid him anymore and she turned to meet his gaze.
I tried looking Krista in the eye, but it was hard. I was confused, ashamed. From the other room, I heard Daniel shout that he’d found the book he was looking for.
As I inched my way toward the cliff, my legs were shaking uncontrollably. I could feel the coldness of the rock beneath my feet when my toes curled around the edge in one last futile attempt at survival. My heart was racing like a trapped bird, desperate to escape. Gazing down the sheer drop, I nearly fainted; my entire life flashed before my eyes. I could hear stones breaking free and fiercely tumbling down the hillside, plummeting into the dark abyss of the forbidding black water. The trees began to rapidly close in around me in a suffocating clench, and the piercing screams from my friends did little to ease the pain. The cool breeze felt like needles upon my bare skin, leaving a trail of goose bumps. The threatening mountains surrounding me seemed to grow more sinister with each passing moment, I felt myself fighting for air. The hot summer sun began to blacken while misty clouds loomed overhead. Trembling with anxiety, I shut my eyes, murmuring one last pathetic prayer. I gathered my last breath, hoping it would last a lifetime, took a step back and plun...
A twig popped behind him, and his head flew around. Only to be greeted by more darkness and the thick mist that had formed out of nowhere. His breathing hastened, and he clutched his
The wretched sack was ripped off her head, along with some of her hair. She was yanked back by the neck of her dress, forced into a kneeling position. Ropes wrenched at her wrists and ankles, tearing at her scabs. Cautiously, her eyes slid open to blinding pain as she stared into the sun. At first, she could only pick out the most prominent details, but the blurriness gradually faded. She felt groggy, as if she had been knocked out. Trees
Disappointment, disbelief and fear filled my mind as I lye on my side, sandwiched between the cold, soft dirt and the hot, slick metal of the car. The weight of the car pressed down on the lower half of my body with monster force. It did not hurt, my body was numb. All I could feel was the car hood's mass stamping my body father and farther into the ground. My lungs felt pinched shut and air would neither enter nor escape them. My mind was buzzing. What had just happened? In the distance, on that cursed road, I saw cars driving by completely unaware of what happened, how I felt. I tried to yell but my voice was unheard. All I could do was wait. Wait for someone to help me or wait to die.
and pale. Her hands were placed on top of her lap and she wrung them
Oh Sh*t! The door slams shut in my face, and suddenly I am stuck in a tight, dark room, where I can’t even move my arms to be able to scratch my nose. It feels as if I have been buried alive, as if I am stuck in a coffin. Every second goes by painfully, seconds feel like hours, and minute’s feel like days.