Afsilla
Afsilla emerges from the darkness. While she rises, she spies, above his heavy chin and aquiline nose, the long look that Nero's giving Regulus. Regulus' face is now a beautiful, tragic mask, gazing at her in despair. In the crossfire of these glances, exchanged without a word, Afsilla can read her fate. She puts her hand on Nero's arm with feigned delight, trying to play for time. "Caesar, it was good to drink to your health!"
Nero detaches himself from her, firmly but without any violence. He tightens the belt round his cloak and approaches Regulus. He murmurs some words into his ear. Regulus, his face pale, knows he cannot prove his own loyalty unless he punishes her betrayal. He closes his eyes for a few moments. Then he gives brief orders to two Scythian mercenaries in their own language. Nero moves back a little so as to better appreciate the spectacle that he has commanded. He leans against a well-laden sideboard and plunges his hand into a dish of pigs' tongues glazed with violet petals. He gives an order to a slave, who sprints away.
The two mercenaries have seized Afsilla, who remains standing, stupefied, in the centre of a circle from where everyone else has cautiously moved away. She can't believe she will suffer this fate, the fate she has already seen time and again. Her young body is full of life, still quivering from her orgasm, she simply can't accept what her panicking mind is trying to tell her.
While her ebony shoulders are bound and made to bear chains, she does not resist. Trance-like, she allows herself to be led beneath the thick, low branch of a gigantic cedar whose compact needles bring a little freshness to the stuffy night. She shivers as the cold links tighten under her armpits, twine around her elbows, and tug on her wrists. Slowly she is raised from the ground, hearing the steel scraping the bark of the conifer.
She peers around, seeking a friendly glance. Hatred, jealousy and depravity will be her last visions. One of the Scythians has brought two large whips made of rhinoceros leather. She feels almost relieved. So Nero just wants to chastise her for deceiving him? She would have cried with joy.
But she hasn't seen two legionaries approaching behind her. They have planted a heavy stake in the ground, right under her legs. The broad tip is rounded off with two projecting oak points, one almost touching the other, shining in the moonlight. She becomes aware of their presence as she is gently lowered down. She lets out a long howl of terror, which make her ample breasts, with their naturally purple aureoles, leap up, "Noooooo, not this, kill me quiiiiick!"
Now the Scythians have spread her thighs apart ruthlessly, and grip them tight as they push the stakes into her living flesh. Her dilated pores exhale a heavy perfume of utter terror. The first spike slips quickly into her freshly-lubricated vagina and immediately jabs painfully against the mouth of her womb. It's almost with relief that she feels her anus, pierced a moment later, sharing the unbearable pressure. She avoids giving voice to her revulsion and fear, saving her breath, careful to avoid any movement which would be likely to set off a wave of pain through her voluptuous body. Inch by inch, the chain is lowered by one of the legionaries.
Nerotakes the lyre, offered by his slave with trembling hands. He strokes the cords in the same slow rhythm as the legionary unwinds the chain, until he is himself dictating the tempo of the descent. Afsilla perspires abundantly. Her thighs and her ankles have started a hopeless struggle to clutch the wood, well polished with use. At first, she believed that her toes, even her toenails, could cling on to some of the wood-grain. But she is slipping down very quickly, feeling now that her organs are about to tear. She starts groaning. The crowd watches fascinated by the broad streams of sweat which gleam on her almost black skin and drip down to the ground.
"Aaaaahhh!" Afsilla lets out a wild cry. The point of the stake has pierced a membrane. She cries out in unbearable pain. Blood mixes quickly with the sweat of her spasm-seized body. Her tormented thighs manage to arch up in a desperate effort to slow down the progress through her body of the two phalli. A whip cracks on her buttocks in the silence of the night. "Nerooooo!". A second blow finds the base of her firm breasts.
"NEROOOO!!!" She stiffens in a wild contraction, her legs slacken briefly, then stiffen again and she lets out a rending cry which drowns the dissonant notes of the lyre. She has just released a long jet of urine which streams down the stake, mixing with her blood. The spectators have instinctively drawn closer, knowing that Afsilla will be unable to fight much longer.
Two whiplashes crack together, one of the Scythians aiming for the base of her breasts, the other for their top, they compress and sting at the same time, and tear as the thin straps are drawn back. The stakes have now brutally intruded a full foot. Afsilla wails, the wail of little girl, it paralyses even the most jealous of the other slaves.
Now her legs are trembling and are no longer trying any more to prevent the slow descent of her body, seized with indescribably erotic shudders. Blood and shit ooze from her holes. The pain is suffocating her unimaginably, this pain which the pressure of the stakes pushes ever further, ever higher up her body.
Her right tit has been just slashed open, and the women are hiding their faces, while some legionaries dare to applaud, as the living God seems happy. Another well-aimed blow in the same furrow cuts a gaping wound. Afsilla gazes down at her almost severed breast hanging above her navel. She is no longer aware of the destruction of her body, no longer afraid of dying. Her spirit is sinking in the dark.
The chain descends a bit quicker,Neroadds to the notes of his lyre some verses inspired by the beauty of the tortured victim. The crowd lets out an "Oh!" of amused surprise when the point of one of the stakes emerges from Afsilla's abdomen. "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Noisy chatter speculates on where other one will appear.
"YYYYYYYEEEEEEEEHH!" The erect oblong nipple of her left tit has just been cut off. Afsilla is not yet dead, her entrails have been simply thrust aside by the rounded point, it has not touched her heart. She no longer has the strength to groan, she no longer feels the final whip strokes, struck with no real conviction, ripping her breasts to shreds, the bulk of their flesh now lying beneath her legs.
She is just lucid enough to feel the second stake perforating her entrails and diaphragm simultaneously, and finding her tracheal artery a few moments later. She is strangled, as if garrotted, when the stake smashes into her teeth. She still finds the strength to let her jaws drop open so the lance slips out, then she falls to her knees amid her own debris, her eyes still open in inexpressible horror, matched in the end with a last, crowning grimace.