Wide brown eyes track the fingers trailing before them, chains clinking above. Quinn flinches back, bare feet scuffing across the floor, as the hand is waved too close to their face, catching a lock of their limp hair.
“Oh, are you afraid, warlock?”
Those eyes don’t leave that hand as it flutters down to hover by their navel. Panic swallows them whole at the threat.
“Funny how this kind of pain in particular gets to you. You’d think broken bones, knives, the whip could get this kind of fear… but no, it’s just a little electricity. Just a shock, and you splinter, don’t you?”
Those calloused fingers are laid spread across Quinn’s stomach, and they yelp in fear, in anticipated pain… but it doesn’t hurt. Their body doesn’t lock up and seize, flinging itself wildly in their chains like their brain was fried and an animal’s racing, too-large heart was stuffed into their chest. They’re fine. They’re fine. The crackling, glowing magic in that hand stopped flowing. It’s just touch. Normal touch.
The Hunter leans in to soak up their anxiety in his smile. “It’s coming. You know it is. You remember so vividly how it feels. I’m going to push electricity into your body, and I won’t let up until I’ve heard all the pretty screams that can be forced out of you. That’s a promise, warlock. Now beg me for it.”
Confusion flashes in those eyes. They blink. “I… you want me to…?”
“Yes,” The Hunter breathes, stepping further into their personal space, nearly nose-to-nose with his captive. “Beg me.”
“O-... okay. Please…” They watch him, searching for something akin to mercy, but he only watches them right back. “Please do it. Sh-... shock me.”
A bushy brow rises expectantly.
“Shock me, hurt me, until I… scream, a lot. Until I scream all the pretty screams you want to hear.”
A broader grin carves its way across the murderer’s face. Static electricity fizzles in his palm, and terror sends twitches across Quinn’s body. The fizzling becomes a buzzing, an itching sting, hot-cold and too sharp. Restless, Quinn almost wishes he’d start already, really start the torture back up. The teasing and watching are almost as bad as the pain itself.
“I’m really going to enjoy seeing you writhe,” Murmurs the killer, and Quinn swallows their hatred. He gets to enjoy this. He gets to pull whatever reactions out of Quinn he wants, because in the end, they’re going to kill him, and that will be the sorest possible defeat for him. This, all this pain, this is a consolation prize for the death he doesn’t yet know he’s been sentenced to.
The thought feels silly and impotent when he ignites his magic all at once. His face, the cellar walls, the outline of the stairs behind him all explode into white, and Quinn feels their throat tearing, burning, to match the supernova of pain being speared through their core.
They don’t hear the screams themself, ears ringing, but they’re sure the Hunter is getting all the sounds he was hoping to hear erupting from them.