by T. A. Miles
Dacia must have been distracted, then. While the demons were pulling away—toward Korsten—that rendered him the most immediate threat.
Dacia wanted to scream, so she did. Loudly.
The treed bitch wouldn’t break, no matter how many of the others were on her and now they were scurrying away. To where? To who, she soon understood, and set her glare on his pretty face.
She was going to eat him whole. As she thought of it, she realized how immediately all she really wanted to do was to touch him and to get his blood all over her. She watched the others crawling over to him, like curious rodents, oblivious enough that the Mother’s limbs knocked several of them into the wall. It broke one of them and its true self poured onto the floor like smoking blood. Instead of quickly enveloping and eating its vessel, however—instead of reveling in its sudden freedom or coming to her—it drifted into the air and toward the Red One.
Anger should have been her first response, but she was immediately jealous...and not of the Red One, but over him. He was going to be hers, she decided. Right now.
She made for him. A woman got in her way and she raised her twice-embodied arm to tear her down, but something stopped her.
It was a name. Not her name, but the girl’s. The name given to the girl by this pathetic doll of the Mother.
“Do not stand in my way, bitch!” She hissed at Ersana. She wished that she could be more present than she was, but the whole of her was anchored elsewhere. It was the only reason she hadn’t fully claimed the girl. It was the only reason Ersana had any sway at all.
“Dacia,” the woman said sharply, as if she could command her. No one commanded her, not even him. Though he would try. He would try now, as if she had failed in her part...as if her task had not been seeded to yield failure.
Damn him! Damn the Mother—whore of the Malakym—for her betrayal and her lies! And damn these people...these all but useless blood sacks.
She would devour them all. She would be bigger than the sea, bigger than him...bigger than the Malakym. The world would be sucked into her very being. She would start with Ersana...but her attention lurched in the direction of the Red One. So vivid...like a red stain across her vision. She would undress her physical form, and his, and merge them where the human fire sparked hottest. She would spread that fire through both of them and part his skin with her nails and her teeth...and drink him...and paint her naked human skin with his bright, burning soul.
Come to me, he sang in a voice as sweet as the Malakym. The song strummed across the red, red strings of his soul, which were not encased within his body, but somehow radiated outside of the lovely form. She wanted to wrap the essence of him around her, like brilliant ribbons—his blood streaming around her own form.
She didn’t realize she had taken physical steps toward him until the witch stood in her way again. She would strike her down this time. Her arm raised and whipped downward, hand open to rend the woman down the middle with the hardened claws encasing the girl’s fingers. The claws raked against a screen of resistance. They sunk partway into the invisible spell the witch had cast, stinging into the girl’s bones. A hiss of pain escaped the girl instinctively and it revealed a weakness in Ersana’s eyes. The witch had no desire to harm the girl. Knowing that inspired an immediate urge to shred the girl’s body before the witch, but the burning for the Red One stopped her.
“Stand back!” she commanded Ersana and swung at her again. The spell continued to shield the witch, and she grew more desperate as she noticed the others crawling closer to the Red One. They could not have him, she would destroy all of them first!
And that was when the Red One turned his dark eyes on her. Like the deepest wells of the earth, they opened onto her and she fell in. I will come to you, he promised. In that moment, his song was all she heard. Like rain through the tops of trees, the whisper of other sounds trickled down onto her. The Mother’s aggravated groans, the scuttling of the others across the floor, the incessant urges of Ersana for Dacia to respond to her...and the blunt protest of another.
“Korsten!” The man she hadn’t even noticed shouted, and that was the last she heard as she abandoned the girl to meet with the Red One. He was going to be hers...completely.
Twenty-Two
Vlas observed Vaelyx taking on a limp as they traversed the underground passages of the ‘uninhabited’ island. He understood what Imris had been implying when she stated that no one lived there. The Islands coven had been devoted enough to its matriarch—to a demon—that they had ultimately given their lives. They had sacrificed their own blood to her and those who had survived the demon’s insatiable hunger had not really survived at all.
They were ghouls, husks of their former selves, disintegrating spiritually at first, but by now mentally and physically as well. There was no cure for these people, and they would die sooner than later, hence the coven’s need for new members and the likeliness that they had resorted to abducting people to satisfy the demon.
Vlas doubted that they even understood a genuine purpose anymore, save to feed her. They were slaves to her desire and something the Vassenleigh Order would have to address.
All the more reason to survive this, Vlas reminded himself. He had no real doubt that he would, so long as he avoided needless confrontation. The greatest challenge beyond this well of Vaelyx’s would be to get out. A Reach required a destination, and in order to perform one successfully, the caster needed a solid sense of where he was going. Irslan’s house would perhaps be the easiest escape, but under urgent conditions, it would be a bit more difficult, particularly with the others he intended to include in the Reach. The three of them had come to this island, and the three of them would leave it.
“How much farther, Vaelyx?” Vlas asked the man.
Vaelyx looked over his shoulder. He didn’t answer beyond that at first, but then waved his hand and promised, “Soon.”
His behavior would have raised Vlas’ suspicions if he hadn’t grown quickly accustomed to his manner. Undoubtedly two decades imprisoned had stunted his social capabilities and Vlas couldn’t say that his own were superior—if the opinions of his peers were anything to go by, which of course they were. He knew he was direct and outright rude in his urgency to get things accomplished. He understood how Vaelyx felt, at least in some ways. They would resolve this, he determined, and Vaelyx could begin putting his life into some semblance of order, whatever order the war would allow.
Imris walked steadfastly beside him, apparently undaunted by any of this. If women were soldiers, she would likely have made a good one, but most everywhere in Edrinor, women were not even constables, let alone soldiers. The only women to see a battlefield in Edrinor were priests. Vlas could not say that he’d seen a female in battle on the Morennish side either. With the increased losses of men, perhaps that would be forced to change.
He wondered passingly if Imris would volunteer herself to the Kingdom Alliance. It was a peculiar sensation that followed, one that had him consider the danger, the likeliness of her death alongside so many others, and the pang of hypothetical regret that accompanied the idea. It mystified him at times, how the years could pass he and other priests by almost without notice and how it was sometimes only hours or moments that made those years felt and lived. He’d learned that when one had more time than most, it was the smaller moments which stood out the greatest. One might have thought them lost, as a grain of sand along the shore, but those grains sparkled brilliantly when lit. He would not forget these hours...not in all the years that may yet be ahead of him. He would carry the memory of this day and even this war long after Imris and Vaelyx were both dead. That realization was often the point where a priest was left to also realize that association outside of the Vassenleigh Order should always remain as impersonal as possible.
He put his thoughts away, lest they distract him from what was of immediate concern. His focus went to his surroundings.
Th
e cave walls were rough and carved open not necessarily by nature, so much as by human hand. Evidence of the demon cult’s existence within the passages was sparse, but clear. Crude wooden construction existed sporadically, including ladders, scaffolding, small shacks, and torches or places for torches to be.
It occurred to Vlas when he gave more attention to the walls themselves that the cultists may have been mining at one time. His mind took the next logical step and he determined that this island had been a resource for Morenne. The Islands coven may have been the entity in league with the enemy, not the governor...unless the governor had more to do with the coven, in which case the accusations Vaelyx didn’t seem to remember making would have been true. But it may have been that he wasn’t accusing the governor directly. It may have been that he was misheard, perhaps deliberately.
The tunnel came to an end. Vlas looked to Vaelyx as the man came to a halt. He kept his eyes on the man as he walked to the gaping mouth at the end of the passage, not pulling his gaze from him until the view demanded his full attention. He found himself standing at the lip of hell’s depths.
The ledge spilled onto a slope, which was rife with pockets and streams of crimson fluid so thick it was at times almost running black. Where it sourced from, Vlas could not tell. In places, it seemed to trickle from the wall, forming a sort of network of veins that connected at random natural-appearing bowls along the floor. Larger pools lay erratically strewn throughout what was a vast cavern. Torches were mounted on poles that stood at least twice as high as a man, their arrangement seeming in no special order.
The entirety of the place had no sequence or pattern. It seemed to stand in blatant defiance of nature, contradicting order with a dark passion that aptly reflected the Vadryn.
“Gracious gods...” Vlas murmured. “What is this?”
Imris only looked at him and he back at her. She had no words for this. It was either as she feared in her childhood nightmares or beyond comprehension at all. The expression she wore labeled it at the very least disturbing and Vlas agreed.
“This is her work,” Vaelyx said to the other side of Vlas, his tone exhausted and not surprised though there were strong notes of worry there. “This is Serawe’s.”
Imris moved so quickly that Vlas nearly missed the fact that she had moved at all, but for the fact that she was on Vaelyx, pressing him to the wall with both fists wrapped over his shirt.
“You helped her to accomplish this!” The constable accused. “You helped her to murder children!”
“Imris,” Vlas said. He stepped in literally, putting his hands on her shoulders as he wedged himself partly between them. “We don’t know that.”
In flagrant disregard for Vlas’ assistance, Vaelyx said sullenly, “Yes, we do know that. I’m—”
Imris shoved through Vlas to press Vaelyx harder and though Vaelyx seemed willing to accept whatever punishment the constable would lay on him, Vlas held her back.
“Constable Imris,” he said firmly. “This is not our task.” Tipping his head toward the ‘well’, he added, “That is our task. Vaelyx didn’t have to bring us here, but he did. Let that be enough for now.”
Imris continued to scowl at Vaelyx, through Vlas. When she finally seemed to see and hear him, she released Vaelyx with a taut shove. Vaelyx took it, though in spite of his willingness to accept blame in the previous moments, he did manage to take on a vaguely affronted look while he straightened his shirt and cloak.
“Hell’s depths have space even for the righteous,” he mumbled to one or both of them. “If you stay around long enough.”
Vlas held out an arm before Imris could attack the man again if she were inclined to. “Let’s just, all of us, stay calm and give attention where it’s due. The rest can be accounted later.”
The constable and Vaelyx accepted that in silence and Vlas lowered his arm slowly, then turned to fully face the well once again.
And now the question was... “How do we dam this?”
In the moment the question was forming, movement stirred in one of the larger bowls. With a sluggish belch, a great swell of blood rose and burst, raining back down on the pool and the ground that formed a rise around it. Several smaller bubbles occurred afterward, and finally something more solid lifted itself from the pool. The blood drew a layer across the body standing within it, sheathing the form of a woman.
Vlas drew himself further into the shadow of the entry and urged the others to do the same silently. Imris obeyed immediately while Vaelyx stayed where he was and murmured as if to no one.
“It won’t matter now. She’ll know where we are.”
“She?” Vlas demanded quietly, though he didn’t actually need confirmation. As a heavy sensation of dread wound itself tautly inside of him, he knew.
Vaelyx said nothing, but under Imris’ breath the demon’s name escaped. “Serawe.”
“Not Serawe alone,” Vlas said.
A glow was forming higher along the slope leading into the well. It grew tall and spread open in a telltale fashion, though Vlas couldn’t be relieved by the sight of a Reach portal as several dark forms crawled out of it. He didn’t exactly know how to feel watching a horde of demons physically herald the arrival of one of his own. As the Reach dissipated and Korsten stood in stark white against a gruesome mosaic of blood and stone, Vlas could only stare.
The Reach did not happen accidentally, but it was almost automatic. Once Korsten fully felt the presence of Serawe, he became spiritually intimate with her through the intimacy the other demons felt with her.
Though he did not anticipate it, her attempt to act through Dacia had made for an opportune moment to separate the demon from the girl and enable Ersana to calm her. Hopefully she would, and the three of them including Merran would be safe.
Korsten scarcely had time to think about them or the crone now. His mind scarcely had the capacity to fit more thought than what was required to comprehend this demon. And it required nearly all of his consciousness to stand against her dark weight. She was massive in spirit, a force on her own. How long had she been here, swelling malignantly with the blood literally surrounding her?
Her physical form was dressed in blood and nothing more. She made steps toward him that would have been dangerous in an instant to most men. Those susceptible would be intoxicated immediately by her visual offering. Korsten saw only the demon. The seductive smile on her features abandoned her immediately when he performed Release.
The spell struck her like a hand across the face. She halted, literally turning her face away from it. She stood for a moment, still as if she were willing herself through an internal struggle. In seconds, she recovered, shook the effect off and looked at Korsten again.
“You would not like me as much outside of this form, priest,” she told him and there was a gravelly discordance to her voice that reverberated through his senses.
Korsten knew better than to dignify a demon with conversation. He worked a second Release, summoning more will to put behind it.
In anticipation of the spell, Serawe shrieked wildly. In doing so, she manifested a spell of her own, one which sent a harsh force across the space between them, shoving him violently back and interrupting his casting.
Korsten attempted to roll with the force, but there were bodies at his feet—the bodies of several confused demons—which confounded his movement. He tumbled awkwardly over and around the beasts, which responded with various shrugging or shielding motions as they let their enemy roll past them. He considered that he would have to fight them too, once they recovered from the Reach they’d all been caught up in.
That recovery seemed to come all too fast, once he hit the ground. All of them looked or turned bodily to face him. The loitering mob of demons shifted as a body of water toward Korsten in the next moment. He recoiled when the first malformed hands reached toward him and then very abruptly and involuntarily shouted
at them to stop.
They did, though Serawe did not. The archdemon stalked toward him on her stained human legs. He rose swiftly to his own, but not before she put both hands on his face and placed her mouth hard against his. She tried to follow through with her body, but his sword manifested, impaling her through the breast as it formed.
The archdemon screamed in his face, showing him elongated teeth before she slammed her hand against his sword and knocked it forcefully out of her body and from his hand. Her ribs cracked obscenely in the motion, a piece of them jutting out from her side, along with bits of flesh that immediately began to pull itself back together. She thrust one hand out while it happened and a stream of blood shot out of one of the nearby basins, directly into her skin. She recovered instantly and with a crooked grin that let Korsten know in spite of her display, she felt the process. She felt pain through the body she occupied.
This situation was no different than Bael, who had the dubious honor in Korsten’s memory of being his first Release. He thought back on it often when faced with a possessed individual. The degrees of risk for both the priest and the victim varied, but fundamentally it was all the same. He tried to enforce that to himself and pushed himself fully to a stand, ignoring the acrid taste of blood on his lips. At the very least, the others were not attacking him. Whatever that meant or would mean later, at least he could concentrate solely on this one for now.
That was what he thought, but then he felt the presence of individuals nearby. Individuals that were not demon, and one of them he knew with stark clarity was a priest.
Vlas retreated further from the mouth of the well. Imris prompted easily, staying alert and not panicking, which served both of them well. Vaelyx was taken by the shoulder and brought back physically. He was pliable in his state, whatever that may have been.
“How can we dam the well?” Vlas asked him. When he didn’t receive an answer, he wheeled the man around to face him. “Master Treir, I have need of your knowledge.”