Pulsing, throbbing, aching were the sounds that punctured Ephesials eardrums. The sharpness of their voices, a series of licks and caws and trills, were foreign to his ears, grating painfully across the surface of his cerebrum like blades on stone.

Ephesial clutched at his head, hating that his hands no longer covered his modestly. But at that moment his desire to block out the screech of their voices outweighed the shame of his nakedness.

“Please…please stop….please”, Ephesial begged, voice raw from pleading. As expected, they did not care that he was sobbing, nor did they care that beads of scarlet blood had begun to seep from his ears. The weeping tears of ruby looked striking against the bronze of his skin, appearing more like regal dripping jewels than bodily humor.

The figures, draped in silken ivory robes, closed in, pinching the circular cage of bodies even tighter around him.

Their voices threaded together, weaving into a blanket of white light that hung suspended in the air above Ephesials sprawled form. His body, which was once shivering from the cold of the marble floors beneath him, warmed under the sudden light.

For a moment, the sensation of sudden sun-warm light on his skin was pleasant, but that bliss soon turned to agony. The heat went from pleasant, to uncomfortable, to scalding in a matter of seconds.

Ephesials skin quickly blistered and boiled from the heat of their sharp tongues. Their words, punctuated and heavy with ancient curses, lashed at his skin until his flesh split and tore to expose images and symbols adorned on the surface of his integument.

In a desperate attempt to stop their assault Ephesial tried to speak, his lips bubbling with blood and bile.

“I repent! I repent….oh Gods, I repent. I’m sorry for what I have done. I will do anything to show you that I am sorry…so sorry…I am so sorry!”

Again, they did not cease their attack at the sound of his pleas.

(They were not the forgiving type)

The sound of their voices hadn’t changed in intensity, but his ears had long numbed the sound to a painful ringing. His eardrums, he supposed, must’ve been punctured by now. Torn and mutilated by the blades of their biblical tongues.

Ephesial glanced up and saw that the pure white of his surroundings was now marred with streaks of red. He swiped at his bloodied eyes and refocused his gaze upward.

Ephesial watched in horror as the bright white canopy of light descended towards him, faster now than it had before. Ephesial was afraid of what might happen once that light touched him. Would it kill him instantly? Or would they continue to make him suffer?

Ephesial knew this was his punishment. They had warned him long ago that the punishment for defying them would be painful. But he had expected a different kind of pain, one delivered by weapon or hand. Not whatever this was. This kind of pain, this long-lasting and humiliating kind, was not what he deserved.

After all, had he not once been a devout follower of the celestial hierarchy? Had he not proved time and time again, how loyal he was to their cause?

As a matter of fact, Ephesial had dedicated his life so profoundly to the seraphine order that he had rejected his only son at their abandoned temple and sold his first daughter to their covenant. Surely, they could have forgiven him for the one slip up he had in all his fifty years of dedication. For his sole mistake of wanting one thing in this world that he could have and love. His wife, Merida, had been understanding when he forsook their son on the temple stairs. She had been heart sore and slightly less understanding when it came to their first daughter, but when the nuns had come to retrieve her 5-year-old girl she had willingly let her go. But when their third daughter came along, a cherub thing with big green eyes and a golden halo, she had refused to give her up.

They were getting older now, and the fact that she had had a third child, let alone a healthy one, was a miracle. This is why when the order had asked him to perform his third and final act of devotion- sacrifice his daughter upon the marble altar - he had refused.

In a fit of blind panic and fear, he had tried to fool the seraphs and trick them into thinking he had obeyed their orders. The child he had bled on the alter that day had his third borns golden curls and blue eyes, but she was not of his bloodline. The child he had slaughtered had belonged to the village baker, one of 12 of their children. A child who was already sickly and dying. The girl, only eight days older than his own child, had lived a torturous life thus far, her broken body chronically pained.

Ephesial knew what he had done was cruel, calloused and evil, but sometimes he tried to convince himself that he had done her a service. Putting her out of her misery had been a kindness her own family would be too soft to give her. Besides, another part of Ephesial was greedy for a family of his own. He had once understood the brevity of the tasks the seraphs ordered him to complete, but now, it seemed they only wanted Ephesial to live a miserable and lonely existence.

Not only had he defied the celestial order with his actions, but he had slaughtered an infant child. Perhaps, in a way, this punishment was deserved. Maybe he deserved what they were doing to his mortal flesh, turning it into a body preserved in script with the sins of his crimes.

Ephesial covered his eyes, as the light came down, their netted curses too blinding for his mortal eyes. Their words, heavy chains of luminosity and power fell upon him, cursing his body in a broiling heat that sizzled past skin and muscle, falling against his bones like a second skeleton.

Ephesial screamed, his voice fracturing and splitting in the way that only a broken man’s voice can echo. Ephesial screamed for the wife and the daughter they had stolen as the first act of punishment against him, the image of their cold bodies in the bed beside him filling his mind. He screamed for the desertion of his firstborn and the loss of his second. Ephesial screamed and screamed and screamed.

The light encroached around him, suffocating his body now red and raw.

The thrumming sound of their voices dulled slowly as Ephesial felt his mind sway and wane. He could feel himself giving up and falling away into the bright nothingness, wanting nothing more than to float away and disperse into the air like light itself. In a hissing snap, the light fizzled away and Ephesial sunk deeper and deeper beneath the earth, far away from the towering figures that watched him fall.

When the rumbling earth settled and the skies ceased their turmoil, somewhere deep beneath the earth a creature stirred. Blind, deaf and naked was he, a creature desperately seeking warmth and comfort in the layered soils that hid roots, bones, and stones. His pierced shrieks rose from his throat, high- pitched moans that quickly diffused into the damp ground that only he inhabited.

Ephesial, now in the skin of a naked and shameful creature, was forced to live alone in his bed of earth, forever beneath the feet of man, shivering and afraid.