The Burning Village and the Frozen Father
The village, now a skeleton of charred timber and ash, lay behind them. Before the wall of ice that ringed the village like a jagged fence, Red Riding Hood, the Wolf, the man, and his daughter stood in a tense, suffocating standoff.
"Grrr..." The hatred burning in the Wolf’s eyes was unnervingly cold, a stark contrast to the roaring inferno consuming the village. It seemed ready to tear them to shreds at any moment, yet it held back, waiting for a command from its master. At least, for now.
"You..."
"Shh! Be quiet." The man frantically clapped a palm over his daughter’s mouth, cutting off whatever she intended to say to the witch and her beast. The pair had clearly come to indulge in ruthless slaughter, yet seeing this defenseless prey, they had chosen to watch rather than strike. Perhaps, just perhaps, there was room for negotiation.
"P-please... no, I beg of you, Witch. W-what is it you require? How can a lowly wretch like me be of service?"
"Who are you calling a witch?"
"Hiiik! My deepest apologies!" Even though she was clearly a witch by any definition, the mere label drew a sharp, displeased glare from her.
"Regardless! Even if this village is burned to the ground, I have a villa in another town with a vault. There are many precious treasures there—I will give you everything! Please, just spare my daughter! I beg you!" He slammed his forehead against the frozen ground, bowing repeatedly. He would offer anything—he would pour out every coin he owned, he would fetch any item she desired, he would even let his own body and soul be reduced to experimental scraps for her to torture for eternity. He pleaded and groveled, desperate only for his daughter’s life.
"Fine. I agree."
At Red Riding Hood’s consent, hope flooded the man’s eyes as he continued to bow.
The man’s body is encased in thick, shifting ice, leaving only his head and neck exposed.
Crack!
"Ugh!" Thick ice surged over the man, binding his limbs. He was rendered immobile, able only to roll his eyes, trapped in a ridiculous, statue-like state. That much, he could endure. He would survive whatever they threw at him. Perhaps they wanted to see if he could refrain from screaming in agony? If so, he would conquer any pain. He steeled his resolve, preparing to swallow his cries, but then he witnessed the witch approaching his daughter, who sat slumped in despair.
"Wait! Just a moment! You promised not to touch my daughter in exchange for torturing me!" He had heard that witches and wizards were bound by their own spoken words. How could she break her promise so easily? The man protested in sheer horror.
The witch, having passed the frozen man, turned back at the protest. She was smiling, her expression one of utter bewilderment.
"I didn't say 'fine' to you. I was talking to him." Red Riding Hood gestured toward the Wolf, who was glaring at the frozen man from the side.
It was true. Whether the rule about witches being unable to revoke their own promises applied to her or not, she had never made a promise to him in the first place. The person she had answered was the Wolf, not the man begging for his daughter’s life. Even if such a rule existed, it was meaningless since no promise had been made to him.
Ignoring the man’s descent into deeper despair, Red Riding Hood walked toward the girl, who was muttering to herself with the light gone from her eyes. The flames gathering in Red Riding Hood’s right hand coalesced into a solid object with mass and form. It was, unmistakably, a wooden club. Contrary to the image of a magical witch, she had chosen a method of torture that was agonizingly physical and mundane. She intended to beat the girl to a pulp.
"Run! Please! Wake up! My daughter! Please!" He shrieked from within his icy prison, but his voice did not reach her. Before fleeing the burning village, he had heard his wife’s plea to take their daughter and run, even as her own body caught fire. He had swallowed his tears and abandoned her to save the child—if this was to be the end, his sacrifice was for nothing.
The father’s desperate cries went unheard. As Red Riding Hood loomed over her, the girl continued to mutter, her mind either shattered or broken. What she was saying didn't matter to the witch. What mattered was this:
"Hiyah!"
Thwack!
"Ugh!"
She raised the conjured club and brought it down squarely on the girl’s head.
"Noooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!" The man trapped in the ice let out a blood-curdling howl at the sight of the brutal violence raining down on his daughter. Even as the veins in his eyes burst and dark, crimson blood streamed down his face, the violence did not stop.
"Hiyah!"
Thwack! Crack! Crack! Crunch!
A strangely cute battle cry, followed by relentless, merciless violence. She struck the girl, who had collapsed after the first blow, changing the target points—head, shoulders, knees, toes—with a rhythmic, sadistic precision, even standing the club vertically to drive it down.
"Please, stop! Do it to me instead! I’ll take the blows! Please, stop! I beg you! I’m begging you, you son of a bitch! You crazy hag! You devil! What sin did that child commit to deserve this? I’m a sinner, I have no words for myself, but her! What sin did that kind, fragile girl commit to suffer such a miserable fate at the hands of a witch like you, instead of God or an angel in heaven? You, too, will suffer the same fate one day!!!"
As the pleas turned into curses, Red Riding Hood stopped her assault.
"You evil hag! You evil hag! Go to hell... Hm? Huh?"
As the clubbing ceased, something strange caught the man’s eye. Despite the relentless barrage of blows, delivered with enough force to shatter every bone in her body, his daughter—though unconscious—had not shed a single drop of blood. There were no signs of a crushed skull, no blood staining the earth; she simply lay face-down, unconscious, her hair severely disheveled. The wooden club, despite being swung with enough force to break bones, showed only slight signs of wear, yet not a drop of blood stained it. It was bizarre.
"Don't worry. Even if the sensations caused by this object, manifested from my flames, feel real, the substance is merely a delusion born of heat and hallucination. I can inflict pain, but I cannot cause actual injury. She felt the agony of bones breaking and her skull shattering, but there are no fractures or wounds on her body. And since she isn't truly injured, the pain won't last long."
"Ah!" A flicker of hope returned to his despair-filled eyes at the news that she wasn't truly hurt.
"But the pain she felt for those moments was real, so she tasted the agony of being beaten to death by a real club."
At Red Riding Hood’s whisper, the hope vanished in an instant. In a way, this was crueler than beating someone to death. If she had been beaten to death, it would have ended; but to inflict only the pain without the release of death? The man shuddered at the sheer, unending malice of her intent.
"Why be so cruel? I’ve done many filthy things in my life, so I deserve it, but why her? Unlike a wretch like me, she is a child who could never be so wicked. Must she suffer because I did wrong? Punishing a child for the sins of the parent is an absurd, twisted logic!"
"A man lower than a dog spewing words lower than a dog."
The response did not come from Red Riding Hood. The voice was not feminine, but masculine—still carrying a youthful, immature tone. And the direction was not from where the witch stood, but right beside him. The owner of the voice was the Wolf, standing next to the frozen man.
"W-what?"
"Children inherit much from their parents. Wealth, and poverty. The child of the wealthy inherits that fortune and lives well without hunger, even without effort, while the child of the poor inherits that same poverty and must struggle and claw just to keep their belly full. Are you saying it’s fine to pass down the abundance built on sin, but not the original sin at the bottom? How laughable."
He had no time to be shocked that the beast was not merely a creature controlled by a witch, but a sentient being capable of rational speech. If he could refute the Wolf’s argument, perhaps the violence against his daughter would end. The man scrambled to find a counter-argument.
"B-but... if that’s the case, our descendants hundreds of years from now will have to suffer for the sins of ancestors they don't even know! To descendants hundreds of years later..."
"I am not asking about hundreds of years later, but the immediate problem of the father and child! To dismiss this as someone else's problem hundreds of years away, rather than your own!"
The Wolf decided there was no further value in conversation. Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!
Cracks appeared simultaneously across the ice encasing the man. Lines were drawn, dividing the ice into shards of varying sizes, and then those lines were drawn again and again. Then, it shattered into a shower of thousands of microscopic glass shards, driving deep, deep into the man’s entire body.
"Gaaaaaaah!"
The man writhed and convulsed on the ground in a torrent of agony, the kind one would only feel if needles were driven so densely into the skin that the original color was no longer visible. With sharp ice shards piercing everywhere—under his fingernails, his toenails, his groin, his solar plexus, and every other vital point—who could possibly remain sane? Watching the human thrash like an insect sprayed with pesticide, the Wolf felt a flicker of amusement, though his eyes remained cold. He did not look away as the man died.
Swept away by a tide of pain that far exceeded the body's capacity to endure, the man convulsed, his eyes rolled back. He wouldn't die while the ice was embedded, but once it melted? He would die. Watching the father's fated end, Red Riding Hood asked the Wolf, "What about this one? Should I finish it?"
"No, leave it. She’s a girl not even worth killing."
The Wolf, usually taciturn but a good conversationalist with a shared understanding, had finally spoken properly after staying silent since they invaded the village. Alternating his gaze between the burning village, the unconscious girl, and the dying man, the Wolf sniffed the air and looked up at the sky.
"Someone is coming."
A second stranger appeared in the unfortunate village.