Kaiser did not give the prisoner time to prepare.
His red finger stabbed into the man's forehead.
There was no blood.
That made it worse.
The finger sank into flesh as if the skull had turned soft beneath it, but nothing split, nothing tore open, and no wound formed around the point of entry. Instead, the red finger twitched once, then began to turn. Like something alive. It wriggled beneath the skin, twirling slowly, searching through the prisoner's head as if the man's body were only a locked cabinet and Kaiser had decided the key was somewhere behind the eyes.
The prisoner screamed.
It was the sound of someone discovering pain in layers, each one worse than the last. His back arched against the floor. His chains rattled violently. His fingers clawed at the stone, nails breaking as his body tried to escape the finger inside his skull and found nowhere to go.
The Emperor watched.
Disgust crossed his face, brief but clear.
He said nothing.
