Red Feline faced the mirror, she raised her head to see herself. It was a sight she never dreamt she would actually see. Her breasts hanging, a long nail protruding from one of them, blood dripping down in a slow beat.

Her body was a wreck, there were whip marks on her face, legs and breasts, she wondered if they would leave scars. It was a terrible sight but she didn't think it mattered anyway. She couldn't believe it was real and if it was she was sure she would not survive.

She heard the familiar hissing sound of the whip breaking the air just before it cracked on her back, breaking her skin even more. She jumped in pain and as she fell forward, her arms rolled up.

The whip kept falling on her back, legs and ass and again she looked for refuge outside of her body. It was preferable to be a witness to her own suffering than to be in her body, suffering the lash. It was the kind of detachment that she had when she could watch her dreams as if they were televised events. She turned further into the other dimension to see Piroska.

The young slave, Piroska, heard "Eleven!", as the lash cut the air on its fast journey to her marked back. She closed her eyes as the pain seemed to spread like ripples on her back.

When she opened her eyes she thought she could see the gaze of the goddess on her. "Twelve!", she heard, and another lash sang it's way to the middle of her back. "You come from a line that started with a sacrificed goddess.", her mother told her once when she was very young. She often wondered what her mother meant and what goddess. "Thirteen!", the soldier sang.

"You will know when the time comes.", her mother had said, "In that moment, when you think that you can't bear the pain or the suffering, she will come to you.".

Piroska anticipated the next lash, the fourteenth as of the soldier's count, and clenched her teeth to prevent a scream emerging from the bottom of her soul. But the cry was not for herself, it was for the memory of her mother's martyrdom. "Was the goddess with her then?... Is the goddess with me as well?".

"Fifteen!", the lash crashed on Piroska's back and she opened her eyes again to look beyond the sky, beyond her reality and into the realm of the gods themselves. She thought she saw the redheaded goddess looking down at her.

As the whip kept carving its familiar bloody marks on Red Feline's back, her legs grew weaker. She was afraid of falling on her knees, she knew the pain would be even stronger so she held up, lash after lash, reacting as little as she could, hoping for an end that didn't seem to be anywhere near.

She wasn't counting, she couldn't, no one could in her position..."There are hundreds of lashes already marked on my back.", she said to herself. One particular lash made her lose her balance, she leaned to the side, almost hitting the post, the pull of her body twisting her arms, her shoulders almost at a breaking point. She forced herself to inhabit her two worlds, one where she was an victim and another where she was a ghost looking down from a high distance at the suffering of an ancient friend.

For a moment she had the feeling that Piroska was not simply looking up to the sky from her whipping cross, but that the young slave was actually looking at her. "Can she see me?", Red Feline wondered as the lash cut across her ass.

"Sixteen!", the soldier cried out as the lash landed on Piroska's legs. The log in between her bent knees and the pole held her body tight against the wood. She shook with the impact of the blows on her back. She reacedt to the lash by pulling her body up with her stretched arms. Her body moved a few centimeters up the post and she could feel its roughness no her chest, her separated breasts, her belly, her crotch. The feeling was nothing like she had felt against the cool, even roundness of the column where she received her first whipping.

This was rough and the edges sunk into her flesh. "Seventeen!", the soldier announced and Piroska looked again beyond the clouds for the goddess that was not there.

Red Feline reacted, jumping back, to a particularly cutting lash that left a deep wound on her thighs.

She tried but couldn't raise her head anymore, all she could see, if she opened her eyes, was through her open legs, her tormentor's boots approaching slightly after every lash, moving away slightly before another lash, the long whip circling her torso, hitting her nipples or the nail.

The nail on her back was the target of many lashes. It moved after each fall of the whip, increasing her pain.

Her body began to numb, she thought it was the end, she hoped it would be. She wanted to rest, to sleep, to stop feeling, to stop the pain. She closed her eyes as the sounds became faint and the light turned into darkness. "It's finally over.", she thought.