Free To Hell and Back by H. P. Mallory

castrate him in the process.
    I started untying the rope around his right hand, but not before taking a few seconds to determine whether or not he was still asleep. With his eyes closed and his breathing regular, I figured I was safe. Once both of his hands were free, his body started to slump forward, owing to the laws of gravity. I pushed against him, and kept him in a sitting position to make sure my sword didn’t inadvertently geld him. Carefully rotating him until he was lying on his side, I straightened out his legs so his private parts were in no way near the sharp edge of my sword’s blade.
    “Hmm,” I said as I studied his back. I could access it perfectly while he was on his side, so I didn’t need to push him all the way onto his stomach after all. That was good news for his nether region. In order to protect his neck and head from the cat o’ nine tails, I tucked his head down and forward as far as it would comfortably go. That done, I turned to my next item of business. Glancing down at the cat o’ nine tails where it lay on the ground, I picked it up.
    Do it, Lily, I ordered myself once it became clearly obvious that I was stalling. ’Course, I’d never so much as held a cat o’ nine tails before, so it only made sense for the thing to feel unfamiliar and awkward to me. Imagining that I was standing too close to Tallis, I backed up a few steps and strained to remember the way he’d flogged himself when I’d come across him in the snow.
    Stop stalling and do it already! I yelled at myself.
    Without another excuse, I raised the hideous object above my head, and brought it down with as much force as I could muster, which wasn’t excessive. The braided ends with the razor blades hit Tallis’s skin, but barely half of them left a mark. The marks they did manage to leave weren’t anything compared to what he’d done to himself in the snow.
    There was no response from Tallis at all.
    You have to do it much harder, I told myself. I inhaled deeply, recognizing the truth in my words because this first attempt merely left shallow scratches on his back. Only a few of the blades drew any blood, and the few drops of blood they did draw were miniscule, at best. I lifted the device above my head again and brought my arm down as hard as I could. The resulting impact of the leather thongs against Tallis’s back made me grit my teeth.
    But my extra effort paid off. Each braided end flogged his skin, and more than a few of the blades embedded themselves into his back. When I pulled against them, I found they wouldn’t budge. I gently pulled a few more times before deciding my tender ministrations were pointless. So, steeling myself, I yanked on the cat o’ nine tails as hard as I could. The handle reeled back at me but all of the blades freed themselves from Tallis’s back.
    Angry, red lacerations immediately spread all over his skin, bubbling over in seconds with thick, syrupy blood. Tallis’s blood was much darker than I expected. In fact, it was so dark, it appeared almost chocolate brown, and was much more sludgy and viscous than human blood should have been.
    Donnchadh’s contaminants, I thought, figuring the answer made sense.
    Rivulets of the gluey stuff began to run down Tallis’s back, covering the black ink of his tree tattoo. But I knew this wasn’t enough blood to purify him. Nope, I’d probably need to drain as much of the contaminated blood as I could until it started to run red and fluid. Glancing back up at my handiwork, I realized I had a good way still to go.
    I lifted the cat o’ nine tails up over my head again and brought it down even harder than I had previously. The blades stuck into his flesh as before, but this time, I didn’t waste a moment trying to gently extract them. I jerked on them, using as much strength as I could manage and the blades pulled themselves free, leaving deeper and more numerous wounds on his back. The fudge-like, brown blood began bubbling out of the new