Carcas was caught completely off guard. Before he could even let out a cry of alarm, he toppled headfirst to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
He was no longer merely trembling as he had before. His entire body was twisting and convulsing violently, his limbs bending at bizarre angles, as if even the bones inside him were grinding against one another with a teeth-grating clacking sound.
Herpo instinctively held his breath, even taking half a step back.
He truly had not expected Voldemort's temper to flare so suddenly, or for him to cast the Cruciatus Curse with such utter abandon.
At least in his memory, even he himself had never cast such a terrifying Cruciatus Curse.
A Cruciatus Curse of this degree could no longer be fully explained by so-called technique or experience.
All he could say was that Voldemort's mastery of the Cruciatus Curse truly involved a talent ordinary people could never hope to reach, allowing him to cast such a curse.
Carcas's eyes rolled back until only the whites showed. He could not even scream; all that squeezed out of his throat were hoarse, gasping sounds, like a damaged bellows wheezing.
Herpo made no sound. He merely watched it all coldly, worried that any word of persuasion from him would drag him into it and earn him a Cruciatus Curse like that as well.
The best choice now was to wait until Voldemort finished venting. In any case, he was not the one being tortured by the Cruciatus Curse.
In the end, Carcas had been cursing him constantly earlier, and had even made Voldemort and Barty Crouch Jr. laugh at him together. He, too, had wanted to torture Carcas viciously.
Now Voldemort was doing it for him. Once Carcas had been tormented to