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Tahgos squinted in the darkness, peering at the lamp-lit streets below. His prey walked below, unaware that they were being stalked from the rooftops. Belostrophus was an odd city like that; people walked the streets at night incautiously, trusting in the guards and the relative peace to keep them safe. Never mind that crime still happened, that people still went missing, that women were still assaulted when taken unaware. Of course, few realized that Tahgos himself had kept the city to the relative cleanliness it had been since the end of the Romaji-Gurftheim wars. Fewer still realized that he was, in fact, the source of some of the more violent assaults as well.

In secret circles, namely the Purveyors of Pain, the Sadistic Circle, and the Disciples of Zanbos, he was known by the title "Exquisite Sufferer: Master of Torturos" and indeed it was well deserved. None of the other devotees of suffering had the expertise and the experience that he had. Some likened his abilities to the Grand Royal Interrogators of Gurftheim, and indeed he had seen some of their works in the past. But what even they lacked was the blessing of the deity whose domain was Torturos.

Tonight it was a drug-harlot and her pimp. A wasted scrap of flesh, too scrawny for a bear to have any right being, and an overdressed pheasant who chastised her even while he benefitted from her day of whoring, walked together on the streets. Rings upon his fingers glittered in the light of the wrought-iron lamps as his hand drew back as the addict said the wrong thing. The flicker of injustice sparked within Tahgos at this, but was quickly quenched by the thought that the pimp might actually strike her. Pain was, after all, his business.

Still, the drug-whore shrank back at the threat of violence; an odd thing to Tahgos' mind as he considered that any bear her size ought to be able to rip such a pheasant asunder despite being rail-thin and female. Did she not realize this? Was she too drug-addled to resist? Did he have some sort of hidden power that he was unaware of?

Shrugging off these thoughts, he followed their path to a good place for ambush. Tonight, Zanbos needed appeasement tonight. The consequences of ignoring the violent god's demands were dire indeed. Torturos was yet an addictive magick, without the power of which caused pain in its user. The hollow in the soul that torturos left once expended would gnaw and fester until it was filled once more with fresh pain. And that pain could only come from another, never from the self. Despite the boons and powers granted by his god, Tahgos was no different than other weavers of torturos. If nothing else, he was more susceptible to the gnawing and suffering left in the absence of his most holy power.

Had the city builders of this metropolis been intelligent and conscientious, they would have placed lamps at the mouth of alleyways. But as it was, the alleys were between the broad circles of light and were cloaked in shadow. It was here that Tahgos lurked, masked from sight as his armored form drank in the shadowy dark of his surroundings, leaving him scab-red instead of his normal bright crimson. This and the lights beyond the alley left him invisible from the outside.

His hands slipped down to his belt to take hold of his blowgun. The darts were coated in a special concoction that he had acquired at great cost from the wild folk of Paltur, a country of high mountains and verdant valleys. This toxin was capable of rendering full grown rhinoceros-folk asleep for about three minutes. One dart slipped into the barrel, the second held between two fingers of the hand held at the end of the barrel. Decades of practice, from when he was a small child all the way to the violent times following his meeting with Zanbos, rushed into his mind. He would take the pheasant first, the bear being more likely to act with confusion and fail to keep her head down and, fleshless or not, she would likely resist the toxin more readily.

Their footfalls closed in. As soon as the pheasant's head was in view did a puff of black feathers appear at his neck. He stopped, his hand flying to his neck as it might for a bug bite. His fingers barely closed around the offending object when he swooned and fainted. The bear woman turned and regarded her collapsed pimp dumbly until the second dart took her in just under her collarbone. Thanks to her years of drug use and her ursine constitution, she stayed awake long enough to see the red shadow of Tahgos' muscle-bound bovine form ghost forward. Arms as thick as her midriff caught her mid-fall and took her into the shadows.

Dahlin and Varizie came to in darkness. Only a moment's struggle found them to be bound, head and foot, lying on cold flagstones, gagged, and helpless. The only sounds to be heard were the scraping of metal on stone. Wide eyed, they scanned the darkness and waited for their eyes adjust. Varizie whimpered aloud, panic setting in quickly as her withdrawals addled her already weak mind. Dahlin wished he could tell her to be silent, but with his beak gagged, all he could do was gargle at her.

The scraping of metal on stone continued as Tahgos sharpened his blades. Unnecessary as his main tool and weapon contained the bound essence of Zanbos' servants, but he found that the sound was as good a tool as any in intimidating his targets. Pain, he knew, was in the mind as much as it was in the flesh. A properly prepared mind could experience more suffering than any other. Unfortunately, he had to do this tonight and didn't have the means for prolonged torture. Still, it would not do for him to be sloppy.

"Good evening," Tahgos said cordially, his voice like scrapped stone and gravelly with age, "You are my guests this evening. I am so glad you arrived. You will do me the honor of providing me with what I need."

All eyes were upon him now, wide with fear, as he revealed himself to his prey. Kalaburr, his favorite object, glittered eerily in its own light, a deep purple aura dancing around its dark iron form. It was an excellent weapon of torment, adorned with scalpel-sharp blades, wicked spikes and hooks, and glistening with substances that would turn each cut and stab into a weal of agony. Its cruciform arms jutted from the sides of his grip, the main head between his fingers. The light flowed strangely around his form, revealing his bloodshot eyes and his pearl-white grin clearly, both glinting from under the pitted iron mask riveted to his face. His breath came in wisps of steam from his nostrils, as if the night were cold even in the dead of summer. From the sides of his head jutted horns cased in sleeves of spike-ridden steel, some so fine that they were barely visible for thinness.

He always liked to start with the face. It was so sensitive and so visible that he could scarcely resist. The flensing blades first cut the feathers of the pheasant's face, shaving them back as a barber might for a mammal. The skin thus exposed, he took time in dragging the spines of his tool across his victim's cheeks before stabbing them, unexpectedly, into the flesh. Cries of pain sounded from the pheasant's throat with every stab, but Tahgos paid them no heed. No one would hear them through the screen he had put up while they lay insensate.

Now he cut off the clothes of both his victims, the subtle fill of torturos coursing within him. Sex-workers or no, none could be hurt more completely than the victims of molestation. Powerful arms propped both the bird and bear upon elbows and knees. They resisted, yes, but a quick stab or slice from Kalaburr soon had them in a much more compliant mood. Checking his work he saw that, in her resistance, he has sliced one of the bear girl's tendons. He felt a twinge of dissatisfaction, for while he drank in her agony at the wound, he disliked sloppy, unintentional cuts. Of course, he never intended that she walk again.

With his victims propped, asses in the air, he bemoaned only that age had long ago robbed him of the ability to properly violate someone. Of course his sexual potency had been replaced by something far superior... the ability to command pain itself. Of course, he also had Kalaburr, whose thorny-shafted handle was quite up to the task that his flaccid flesh no longer could sustain. He waited, dragging out the horror of their predicament with a few shallow cuts across the backs of each of them. They screamed, they writhed, but ultimately they were helpless against his ministrations. Tiring of this teasing, Tahgos turned on the tender flesh between his victims' rumps.

The spear-pointed end of Kalaburr traced the opening of Dahlin's sensitive cloacal vent, dragging the wicked-sharp tip. His breaths came in short, sharp gasps, each carrying a scream of horror. That scream lengthened until his lungs could squeeze out no more as the barbed shaft was plunged unceremoniously within. The spines and hooks caught and tore at his insides, rupturing his delicate tract as it passed through.

Varizie had screamed the entire time she saw Dahlin so violated, blood pouring from him as he was repeatedly penetrated. At last the bull withdrew the dripping shaft and promptly turned on her. Unable to move, her mind tried to defend itself. How had she come to this?! But there was no defense from Kalaburr, and as it plunged into her well-used cunt all she could focus on was her cruel fate.

Now filled with horrific power, Tahgos departed, victims left to die.