Disclaimer: Visceral descriptions await. All ye of faint heart have now been warned.


Small droplets of blood fell to the ground, pattering quietly against the concrete floor of the Hallow, syncopating the ragged rhythm of hissing breaths that filled the chamber. Avis' head fell back, her eyes tearing as she blinked up at the ceiling and her hands trembled before her. Her hair hung heavily against her back, strands sticky with sweat clinging to her skin as she fought to calm herself. A part of her wanted to grab the loose ponytail she'd gathered it up into and slice it off, freeing herself from it's oppressive warmth against her spine.

She ignored the urge, though, and let that distraction go, sliding from her mind as she forced herself to lower her head and direct her eyes back to the mirror that sat before her, reflecting the bloodied glyph she'd been carving into her flesh. She drew in a deep breath and groped for a clean piece of paper towel with her free hand, using it to wipe the spill of blood away from the cuts she'd made in her flesh.

She was halfway done.

With a shaking hand she tossed down the soiled piece of towel into the pile that had been built next to her ankle, and picked up the thin pliers she'd be using to grasp the strips of skin she'd be flaying away. The bloodied hand holding her scalpel clenched, tendons jumping beneath her skin as she forced the tremors away. She'd need a steady hand for cutting the strips of flesh away.

Steel touched the tortured flesh of her abdomen, and with excruciating patience, she let the pliers close down, and pulled gently as she set the scalpel to work...

Even among the Awakened, there would be those that would call what she was doing insane, but Avis didn't care. She walked the Path of Scourging, and she was not afraid of pain, or blood, or healing wounds. For many Warlocks that was not true. For many, the Scourging only took place within the Mind, and it was only psychic pain that scoured weakness away, but it was not just the Mind that Avis wished to learn of.

No, she was determined to learn of the Mind, and the Flesh.

Especially the Flesh.

For too long she had ignored it. For too long she had treated it as a meat prison that could only rarely be escaped, but that was only a partial truth that she had known. For within that prison there were other Truths to be found and, now, she was going to delve them.

Flesh parted from flesh, a strip of skin peeling away from its deepest layers, infinitesimal strands of blood and fluid snapping as the strip was parted against honed steel and left to fall into a scorched, metal offering bowl that had been placed before her. Normally it was folded pieces of art that she'd offered up, but today there was no paper meant for that bowl. Today, she was presenting a much different offering, and with it, attempted to gain something far more precious than Mana: Truth.

At first, she had thought she could find those Truths through a veil of pleasure and desire, and had not even conceived of this, but when she'd tried to part that veil she'd only be reminded of pain; of the scourge, and so she'd sought an edge and turned it towards herself. Towards that part of her that made her weak, for it was misunderstood. Through the agony, through the mortification of her flesh, she hoped to learn that which she'd ignored before.

Finally, wincing beneath the agony of roughened fiber rubbing across the tormented layers of flayed flesh, Avis wiped the pooling blood away and saw that she was done. Her tools dropped from trembling hands and droplets of blood scattered as the steel rebounded off of man-made stone. She took up a bottle of lighter fluid and doused the limp strips of skin until they looked wet and slick, like the corpses of dead worms, and then she pushed the bowl away and took up a match.

Flame reflected off of the blood slicked ring upon her right hand, light pooling in the small wells of red that had gathered among the delicate lattices of metal, and she tossed the match...