Authors: JM Guillen
Within fifty steps, we came to a
metal door hanging open just a touch. From within, a strange, hellish light
pulsed.
Inside were horrors from another age.
Fear pounced again like a fiend
waiting in the darkness. A hellish red light was cast by a series of strange
glyphs, gouged deep into stone and wood.
They shone and shimmered independently of each other.
They seemed to leer at me, their
glow undulating through the air, moving by their own will. Every wall, every
door, the ceiling, and the floor were covered in tiny intricate carvings.
Seemingly at random, blood-red brilliance poured forth from them.
“Sorcery.” Sire Mattias grimaced.
He had to be right. This wasn’t
alchemy or some artificery. I couldn’t explain what this was beyond terrifying.
The lights rippled malevolently, like eyes peering from behind some great,
cosmic veil. I felt watched, and part of my mind realized it was being stalked,
hunted, by unknowable creatures that slinked behind nightmares.
“Peace, Handmaiden. Breathe.”
The sickly sweet light showed a room
of horrors. Three tables, with one in the center of the room and one on either
side, were covered in strange books and stranger tools: rusty clamps, blades
with bizarre curves cut into the metal. The entire ceiling made a meticulously
painted skyscape with glyphs representing stars. I only recognized it because I
could make out the Mantle of Selis, then the Dread Sickle, and then Dylanns’
Stave. The glyph must have taken weeks to finish.
I found taking all this in difficult,
however. My dreaming mind screamed, raving at me to run, get as far away from
this place as I possibly could. The sigil-stars seemed to move, a rolling,
disorienting motion like waves on the ocean. I found myself weaving on my feet
on the edge of dizziness. It needed every scrap of will I possessed to simply
stand there, unmoving, as the abyssal light tickled its way across my skin.
Breathe.
Two other doors led from this place.
One also had an eerie red cast, while the other was pitch. I stepped carefully
to the left, pushing the dark door open. It swung lazily, with more of that red
light glimmering from behind.
I peered in the doorway.
Someone was there.
I jerked away, back around the
doorframe, but no one came rushing out. I bit down my fear and stepped back
into the doorway.
Sire Mattias must have heard my
movement, for he hurried to my side, Rydia’s light shining from his rod of
office.
“Who—?” He stepped in fast, certain
someone had been lying in wait.
Little more than a glance told me she
was no danger.
Her body hung suspended in the center
of the room, arms tied over her head. Her pretty, blonde hair fell in a tangled
mess around her face. I stepped in, gently pushing her hair back. Graceful,
pointed ears hid beneath the hair.
A human-kin.
She dangled limply, her naked form
covered in thousands of small markings. I turned her so I could see her face,
and my heart pounded in my chest. Tiny symbols had been burned into her face,
her breasts, even her eyes. The symbols shone a sinister red, illuminating a
table of sharp tools that had obviously been used to mar her body.
“Rydia’s Fire,” I choked in horror.
Dead and used. Taken by the foulest
rites.
Sorcery.
Sire Mattias walked over to the
bookshelf and thumbed through the titles there.
“
Alchemie Dragus
.” He muttered
as he pulled one from the shelf and opened it. “It’s a complete primer. Work
like this was done over weeks.”
“This—” I couldn’t take my eyes from
the young woman. The bowl at her feet was stained from where it had caught her
blood.
“It can’t be comprehended,
Handmaiden. It’s nothing sane or whole.” He shook his head grimly. “Lithia let
this happen. I told her.
I told her.
”
I took my eyes from the woman’s body.
I wanted nothing more than to take her down. Take her down and wash her body
with lilac and vetiver.
I doubted she even spoke my tongue,
but she deserved better than this.
I fought back tears. The sigils
flared, a dull heat, as anger washed through me. During my training, I had
studied histories of the ancient cults and some of their lore. This, however,
was something entirely different.
I had never seen anything like it.
She had a small, inked tattoo on her
wrist, ivy with a rhinna flower entwined.
That tiny tattoo made her real, made
her a person.
My fury turned to hot coals in my
stomach.
I cannot say how long I stood there,
gaping at her.
Eventually, Sire Mattias insisted
that we move on. “There may be more. We might be able to stop whatever horror
he is working tonight.”
That idea pulled me back into focus.
Of course. Both the guards and Emlie had claimed that Devariis was planning
something tonight. We came too late for this one, but perhaps—
“Yes.” I could feel the fire in my
sigils and felt their righteous wrath, a burning twin to my own. “Whatever Orin
is doing tonight, he will be stopped. He will be stopped from doing anything
like this ever again.”
Sire Mattias could only nod. Leaving
the woman behind, we pushed through the abyssal light to the other side of the
room.
There, we found a door that
whispered, a door that held only darkness.
We exchanged a glance but said
nothing.
He took my hands gently in his. His
grip felt firm with the familiar calluses on his large palms.
I looked to his face, and his mist
and lightning eyes seemed to search mine.
One of his hands rose to cup my
cheek.
I nuzzled it and laid a light kiss
across his palm.
Mattias uttered a slight groan.
For a moment, behind his eyes, I saw
everything: every time he had touched me, every rose, every blooded thorn.
In that moment I knew.
He loves me.
My heart glowed with a sudden surge
of happiness.
“Keiri.”
I saw him struggle. I watched as my
Sire wanted to speak, but for the first time, he found no words.
“No. We will have time after.”
I wanted to speak with him, to carol
our love to the mountaintops. There was no time. Not now. Orin had to be
stopped.
He nodded slowly. “Yes. After.”
We pushed into the darkness.
He whispered a word that was not mine
to hear, and his rod began to glow again. Faint against that velvet night, it
was all we had.
I stayed by his side, my breathing
steady. I remained focused, prepared.
I was flame, ready to unfurl.
We pressed on for ten strides, then
twenty. The earth beneath our feet turned damp, and the smell of seawater
tinged the air. Moss lined the walls, which soon gave way to the juts of a
natural cavern. The well-packed earth underfoot became studded with stepping
stones.
I smelled something else. Cook fires,
perhaps.
“Keiri.” His tone carried both
warning and question.
I peered ahead but could scarcely see
what he was speaking of.
It looked like a person sitting in an
odd stone chair.
“Present yourself.” My Sire stepped
forward as he spoke.
As light washed over the figure, I
noted a wide, leering grin that spoke of mania and madness.
“A mask,” Sire Mattias whispered.
Yes, a mask, easy enough to tell now,
made of bronze or maybe copper. I couldn’t tell in the faint light.
The person did not move.
Sire Mattias took my hand and crept
forward, holding his rod before him.
“Are you injured?” His whisper was
hoarse but carried in the roughly hewn tunnel.
Silence.
The light from Sire Mattias’ rod fell
glittering on the mask, highlighting that leering smile and blank, smooth eye
sockets. The wearer wouldn’t be able to see through it at all, but nonetheless,
the mask seemed to gaze through me.
“The chair,” I whispered, but my
voice seemed loud. “There’s something strange on the armrests.”
We edged forward again, peering
through the dim light. The armrests were stained dark with blood. It looked as
if the figure had bled out through the wrists, and channels on the chair had
guided the blood down. Two more small bowls sat at the person’s feet, and they
brimmed with dark liquid.
Then, pain. Pain in the form of a
word.
A word that may not be written, that
none who walked by light might speak, the word echoed in memory, in the depths
of who I was. It felt sharp, a word that cut.
It
meant
pain. It meant pain
in a tongue so old that the creatures who spoke it were lost to history. It was
scorpions in my ears, stinging, their venom like fire.
Sire Mattias stood tall and screamed
into the darkness. At the sound, I felt my sigils sing, felt the fire that
shines but never flickers.
The pain shattered. It fell apart
like glass before a stone.
Then there was laughter in the deeps.
Orin Devariis spoke into the
darkness.
“A great expanse exists between
knowing and believing.” His voice came in a rich, deep timbre that sent
shudders along my flesh. “I knew you would come. I knew it the moment we were
together. I felt the bond you cast between us, love.”
My eyes flickered to Sire Mattias.
He was calm, focused. He held his rod
aloft. He seemed ready.
I stood straighter. I touched my
sigils with the edge of my mind.
Together, we said nothing.
“I didn’t believe it. Even after my
cottage burned. Even after you vanished into the night. I couldn’t believe that
you would ever harm me. Ever do anything against me. But my senses don’t lie. I
knew you’d left a portion of yourself behind, within me. I didn’t know how it
was possible. So I began to seek. I asked questions.” He chuckled darkly, “Oh,
the things I found.”
Then he spoke again, a different word
in that same strange tongue. The air seemed greasy just having borne the sound.
Suddenly, bursting forth from some
lost dream, a mockery of light filled the room. It shone from twisted pattern-strings
cut into the walls, a strange, dizzying violet-green glow. The shadows cast by
that light twisted, bent.
Seeing horrified more than blindness.
The corpse we stood next to—for it
was a corpse, of that there was no doubt—was only one of many.
Five more of the restraining chairs
sat along the walls, first to the
right, then, not five strides further, another on the left. All were naked,
save those strange copper masks. Each held different leers of death and madness
upon their face.
The
sallow flesh not hidden by the masks sagged.
The closer I looked—
Oh.
The masks weren’t strapped on. While
red hot, they had been seared to their faces. These deathmasks could never be
removed; the leering grins would never rot.
I remembered the smell of cook fires.
At the end of the hallway, Orin
Devariis sat like a king before his court.
He wore leather and black sable fur
with silver rings and studs.
His mask flashed silver, similar to the others, but ferocious, with a
toothed maw and wide, fury-filled eyes.
Sire Mattias did not flinch from his
strangeness. “If you found half of what is true, then you know this is at an
end, Devariis. Sorcery will not be abided.”
Orin chuckled, a mocking, twisted
thing. “You will wish for an end, Mattias. I will see to it. Alas, no end will
come.”
Things happened very quickly then.
Sire Mattias leapt forward, his rod
shining in the maddening light.
I stepped behind him. My mind grasped
the edge of my sigils; my heart wept over the nameless people whom Orin had
tortured and slain.
Before we took two steps, Orin rose
to his feet. He spoke again, a clever, depraved word that had teeth, a word
that took children in the night.
One of the masked corpses stirred,
then trembled. Slowly, it’s leering, shining face turned toward me.
I felt like I would drown in those
smooth, black eye sockets.
Drown and die in the dark and cold.
“Sire,” I beseeched. My heart
screamed, pounded.
“I see them, Keiri.” Not Handmaiden.
Keiri. As if he wanted to hold my name in his mouth before he began to scream.
Then, they stood, broken puppets
under the control of a mad monster. They moved graceful, like the shadows of
the damned. They walked like the dead laughed.
My Sire did not hesitate.
He was the flame that did not
flicker.
He was Her rod and Her lash.
Sire Mattias leapt forward at the
first of the twitching, grinning abominations. His rod sang with the light of
Rydia as he swung it, crushing the side of one of the creature’s heads.
Then, like a swarm of darkness and
filth, they set upon us. Grasping, clawing, they caught my clothing. One of
them raked deep gashes along my stomach and breasts.
They whispered quietly, the kind of
sound that children hear when the land sleeps. They whispered words that had no
place in this world.
“Keiri!”
Sire Mattias’
voice sounded tight, almost
panicked.
His rod shattered one of the
creature’s knees, but it remained unaffected. It crawled after him on the
ground. Several of them crushed against him as they rent with their teeth and
clawed with their nails. The entire time, the corpses showed nothing but those
leering faces while whispering secrets that the living never knew.
“You think I am a monster to be
sure.” Orin spoke as if to converse over dinner. “I did not slay these. They
gave themselves to me. They asked, begged.” He sat back in his seat. “Learn
then, the meaning of faith. This is devotion. Devotion undying. Nothing like
the shadow of faith you bear.”
I could not listen to him, could not
care. The creatures bore me down with weight alone. I reached for my sigils.
Quariin
yearned to be used.
I released passion’s fire.
“Your body is like a song, pet.” He
paused inside me and bent over my body. He was the entire world. “It’s a song I
would never tire of hearing, would always
—
”
He gasped then, as I ran my nails
down his back, pulling him deeper.
Now was not for poetry, for control.
Now was only for burning.
Like the sun’s kiss, the blaze of the
forge enveloped my hand, first yellow, then blue, then white. Blessed by Her
fire, it singed not so much as a hair. Yet when I touched the closest masked
abomination, my smile grew wicked and sharp.
“Burn then. Burn and rest.”
It caught like tinder, like old, dry
wood. Even as it lashed at me, the fire born of my passion spared me. The
flames ate at the monstrosity, hungry and fierce.
Still the corpse never stopped
whispering. Even when it fell to the ground and moved no more, it still
whispered.
The others knew no fear of the fire,
no understanding of what had happened to their fallen ally. The next one to
bear down on me had been a woman. Pale and naked, she lunged like a ravenous
insect, a thoughtless puppet to Orin’s demented will.
I reached for her. She burned as
easily as the first, her skin boiling, blistering, and running beneath my
touch. Yet the fire in my hand dimmed. It would not burn forever, I knew.
No passion ever did. More’s the pity.
Orin called out then, and the flames
devouring the woman died like a snuffed candle. He called to his servants,
crying commands in a tongue I did not know.
I noted my Sire, overrun with three of
them bearing down upon him. The ones that my Sire bludgeoned simply crawled or
dragged themselves forward.
Only Rydia’s flame had truly felled
any.
They had no fear; they felt no pain.
Orin. He commanded, and they obeyed.
I dodged around the scrambling woman,
ignoring the strange leer on her face. I moved past Sire Mattias, accepting
that he could only keep them at bay. At best, he had a stalemate against three
of the whispering masks.
I ran for Orin.
He realized my intent before I made
five strides. He turned toward me, his terrifying mask gleaming in the odd
violet-green light.
He spoke pain into being.
It was different this time. Before,
he had called the word into the darkness. He could not see us but only knew we
were there. This was almost intimate, like a man who has lain with a woman,
telling her a secret. The sharp word was mine, meant only for me. It was a song
of agony, a cacophony of every pain I had ever felt.
I screamed.
Pain. It’s only pain.
“I discovered it all, you know.” He
sat back again, watching me writhe, watching my Sire fight for his life. “After
you left, I learned so much. I learned about Gryn and his loyalties. I
discovered little Emlie right in my own house.” His voice held a secret smile.
I sank to my knees. The pain ground like
glass shards in my joints and churned like snakes of agony in my stomach. My
nose began to bleed.