Mara dropped her shovel as soon as she heard the piercing screams. The voice was distant but unmistakable. She sprinted across the rocks as fast as her weary bare feet could carry her, praying she was wrong. Cresting the ridge, she fell to her knees and wailed in horror...
Mae made tearful eye contact with her for a split second before the snakelike whip thrummed down through the air and snapped across her shoulders once more. She lurched in the chains that bound her underneath the looming scaffold and another shriek of pain joined her sister's cry.
Klaus, the foreman, whipped her without respite or mercy, sweating through his shirt from the exertion.
"Please," Mara begged him on her sister's behalf, "Please let her go! She's taken enough!"
"Shut it, Filth!" Klaus shot back. "Your pretty kin here missed her quota again and it cost ME a day's pay." He punctuated himself with another crack of whip. "So I'm taking the cost out of her skin!"
Mae's threadbare garments were shredded above her waist and a sickening crosshatch of bloody stripes blazed crimson across her shoulders and back.
"Take it from mine!" Mara howled desperately. "It's not her fault! Punish me!"
"Don't order me around, pest! Back to work!"
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