Seven Sins: Wrath (Solo)

The candles were bleeding.

Anywhere else, to anyone else, this might have been a concerning development. Instead, he leaned closer, dipping a fingertip as white as ash into the thick ruby bead rolling down the side of the nearest one. It clung for a heartbeat as if it didn’t want to be parted from its perch before finally the surface tension broke and it flowed freely over the probing digit.

The stained finger rose slowly to his face before being pressed softly, carefully on his eye. Normally the blood would be daubed on the eyelids for this particular ritual, but that wasn’t currently an option. His own eyelids were peeled back, the soft pink flesh embraced by delicate hooks leading to slender chains that wound under and through skin and bone, disappearing under his brow.

The blood stung as it coated first one eye then the other, leaving a clinging red film over everything his gaze fell upon. But the minor irritation went barely noticed amid the ruination he had heaped upon his own flesh. He inhaled slowly, deeply, filling his lungs. Held it. Felt his chest expand to capacity. On the exhale, he quieted his mind that little bit more, feeling the cool air pass over lips that were torn and raw.

Satisfied, he adjusted his position on the cold stone floor of the chamber, legs crossed, hands cradling something within their spider-like cage. Thin steel wires wrapped those hands, biting deeper into incisions in the tender flesh between each finger with every small movement. Habitually he splayed his fingers out and closed them a few times, savouring the threaded metal rasping over exposed nerves. But focus reasserted itself again.

He checked once more to ensure he was in alignment with the carefully chalked design spiralling out from his position. Each time his eyes danced over each of the individual marks making up its entirety he could feel the strain, could sense the subtle wrongness of their geometry pressing in. The ones directly before him were hidden beneath a tattered map, its singed edges and stained face betraying how many times it had been here before. Satisfied, he raised his left arm out straight before him, still clutching its treasure out of sight.

Breathe in.

The smell of the candle wicks slid into his nostrils, making it tingle with the unmistakable scent of burning hair. The air was tinged with the coppery tang of blood, and not just the tears of it wept by the tall, stout candles. Focusing only slightly more, he could detect the heated fat of each of the seven points of light in the chamber. Like a frying pan that hadn’t been scoured before being reused. Though there were few who might have recognised this particular odour, it sang out sweetly to him – the words in the small tome sitting open beside him danced once more through the back of his mind. ’Mayke ye thy candils wyth the tallow of an hangid man.’ It hadn’t been difficult for someone like him to acquire such a thing.

Breathe out.

Without looking, a hand slithered out to place a small copper bowl before him, the small pile of dusky maroon powder within cascading over itself like miniature dunes. Even once the bowl was left alone, the reagent within continued to churn and roil like silt stirred up on a riverbed.

The rest of the small room was veiled in shadows that pooled viscously in the corners, held at bay resentfully by the tapering tongues of flame. The sounds of the room’s other occupants tried to slither into his consciousness, but with a small effort of will, he managed to keep them at bay. A minor incantation spread across the room limited their presence to an insubstantial background buzz for the most part, a soft blanket of white noise. He tuned out the few moans that were audible, the whispered words and the smell of blood and sweat that each of the three gave off.

Not yet, he thought.

Reaching out again with only his will, he kissed the top of the powder with a coiling flash of black fire. The shadows seethed in the presence of this unholy element. The close confines of the chamber became a touch more claustrophobic as the darkness was simultaneously fed by the unlight it shed, and battered back by it. While it didn’t disorient him in the slightest anymore, he could feel reality gain a bit more friction against itself at the paradox. Where the soft glow of the candle-flames danced up the walls it was riddled through with twisting, necrotic veins of darkness. A plume of heavy smoke the colour of rust crawled sluggishly over the tarnished edges of the little copper dish before it seemed to hit a barrier and twisted languidly in place. If one looked closely, they would even swear they could see tiny shapes cavorting in the tendrils. But it wasn’t wise to look that closely.

Oh, he knew.

Finally, with the preparations complete, everything as it should be, he began.

His fingers uncurled slowly and from within his cool palm there dropped a small, uncut gemstone; it stopped suddenly, exactly two-fingers-width above the copper bowl of burning incense, swinging pendulously on a chain looped around the truncated end of his ring finger. It looked almost like a garnet, shimmering suggestions of reds and blacks in its glossy depths but its origins were nothing so mundane. Eyes unable to close, he watched the interplay of natural light and his own Hellfire shift alluringly over the gem for a moment, waiting for it to cease its jangling dance even as he lowered his head and devoured the smoke with a single rasping breath.

Spine arching, head thrown back, tendons taut in his neck. A violent shiver wracked the lean body, and he smiled inwardly as he felt no small number of artistic lacerations and piercings open wider, his flesh plucked all over like a harp strung with nerves. His pupils, normally mere slits, widened until they almost engulfed the golden irises. Every sense was sharpened like a razor, sliding through the soft meat of his conscious mind. He felt a tiny, molten bead of saliva escape his mouth, running over the exposed bone and muscle where his chin had been opened, the flaps of skin pinioned with slender steel nails driven into the jawbone beneath.

Finally, he allowed himself to take in the three bound figures around him. A dark smile crept up his features, the corners of his mouth parting bloodlessly as it continued to widen beyond what any smile should.

All three were humans, at least originally if not in their present state. Willem, Rark and Ezekyle had been their names, a long time ago now. Not that any of them would recognise the syllables if they heard them. And as his eyes wandered over the raw lumps of scar tissue where once eyes and ears had sat, he sincerely doubted they were likely to.

Each of the men was bound to the wall behind him, suspended above the floor in a harness of thick chains that hugged them tight to the bare stone, nails as thick as a man’s wrist keeping the heavy links in place. Dark smears of russet colour, barely discernible in the chaotic light permeating the room, marred the places their heads had smashed and ground repeatedly over their incarceration. That they would damage themselves was unavoidable; but precautions had been taken to ensure the damage was at least kept to a minimum. For in addition to the lack of senses, each of the bound three was also lacking something much more readily apparent.

Their limbs.

While the stark, cross-hatched ribbons of scar tissue over their faces hinted that the wounds had been inflicted savagely, with nothing sharper or more durable than their own fingernails, the rest of their loss had his protean signature writ large across it. If he had ever given it a second thought, surely the words ‘necessary evil’ would have sprung to mind. But he never had, so the words went unspoken. Instead, he thought briefly of the vicissitudes that had landed them in their unenviable state. The men, the former workers, had come into contact with something beyond them – a wellspring of tainted, raw psychic flotsam that had poured through their fragile and all-too-human minds like molten lead. But just as when pouring liquid metal through an anthill, while it destroyed what lived within the tunnels, it preserved the passages themselves. They had been hollowed, but with his.. gentle encouragement, something else had been contained within their ravaged husks.

The pendulum hanging from his finger started to move, twitching and jerking at first, drawing his attention back. Soon it was moving out in a wider and wider spiral, widdershins. His hand still had not moved. But the stone picked up momentum. The powder beneath it shifted too, the smouldering substance moving back up on itself with a sound like a snakeskin dragged over sand until, reaching its apex, it began to rise into the air like a questing serpent. It swayed uncertainly for the span of a single breath before it latched on to the gem, following its circuit above the bowl as iron to a lodestone. Every trace of the still-burning powder left the bowl, creating an unbroken circle in which the pendulum travelled. With a flick of his free hand, the now empty copper dish was cast aside, leaving just the weathered map beneath the swirling vortex of ember. All at once, around him, the candle flames tilted away from where he sat as if caught in a breeze. But they did not go out; instead, the flames shifted, burning sideways until they looked like nothing more than little eyes. They peered inwards at the sigil’s seated occupant unblinking, almost expectantly.

A single word left his mouth, visibly shivering into the still air as it was birthed.

Shoulders tensing, he braced himself as the silencing incantation was swept away, mist dissolving in the morning sun. And in rolled the cacophony pouring from his carefully crafted vessels around him. It smothered his mind more than the perpetual smog of Ettermire choked the sun’s light of power and warmth. Their mouths moved, blood clinging in thick strands to their chins. But the deafening, visceral wall of noise that tore from the ruined creatures didn’t match even their frantic gibbering. It was almost a physical force, assaulting his heightened senses to a level that transcended the flesh. It smashed against the bastions of his psyche relentlessly, but he had been prepared for it. Even so, he could feel sweat beading on his brow and his teeth ground together in his mouth with the sudden strain. Like rising from the depths too quickly, there was a hideous, wet pressure building behind his eyes. ‘Prepared’ and ‘ready’ were not always one and the same.

It was a sound that defied description. It was the screaming winds of Pandemonium; the soul-starved shrieks of the Abyss; the plaintive wailing of the ever-in-flux denizens of Limbo; the soft pained whispers of those who could not escape their own minds no matter how far they ran; a hundred, a thousand sobs, hysterical peals of laughter, whispered entreaties, begging, raging, scathing, ranting… it was all of these and more. Every note of this grievous song joined the ones before and after it. The discord rising and rolling in on itself, stirred by the undertow. It was a creation much more than the sum of its parts, and for a moment he was proud.

It was, in a word, Madness. Not the pale shadow most thought of when confronted with the word. This was a pure and gestalt amalgamation of true, elemental insanity. The nature and wellspring of its myriad fractured branches given voice.

Something wet slithered from his ear.

He didn’t pay any attention. He felt the chain around his finger heat up considerably as the wave rolled against his mental defences. The sigils on the floor burst into vivid light, each lined in a sickly, cyanotic radiance as the chaos in the room was channelled through them one after another. Inwards. Towards his pale, cadaverous form.

There was a word for what he was about to attempt. Not many bodies out there knew it, and the very few who did counselled against it. It was, they said, folly. It was tempting fate, it was dangerous at worst, idiotic at best. To try it courted disaster and that well-earned.

It was called chresmomancy; the art of divination through the ravings of lunatics. But any “learned scholar” would cite the unreliability of listening to a madman for insight. And as the violently siphoned psychic force crushed the bastions of his mind more and more with every hiking, laboured breath, he would agree with them – there was little to be gleaned from the ravings of one or two; even three of the tortured souls whose perceptions fit jaggedly inside their own fragile cradles of sanity, cracked mirrors who saw reflections of reality no-one else could.

But what about listening to them all?

With a final, pained grin, Aurelianus Drak’shal dropped his mental barriers and as the tempest roared through him, setting fire to his sanity, he watched the future unfold before his eyes…

… and he laughed.

Cadin took the stairs two at a time, heavy boots ringing off the cold stone. The alarm bells mounted on the walls were shrieking like bastard banshees and it was all he could do to keep his teeth gritted and try to ignore them.

Just keep running.

Bounding to the top of the narrow flight of stairs, he had to shoulder his way through gaggles of the disturbed perverts and pleasure-seekers that were drifting out into the hallways. Some angry mutters and shouts followed the sprinting man, but the rest were pacified out of their faces on whatever cornucopia of drugs and drink they had devoured that day, or were simply too inured to sensation to really notice his passing. They were being drawn by the hitherto unheard sound.

And how Cadin wished the sounds bleating from the cold-iron bells mounted high on the walls had remained unheard. He knew what they meant. And it was a grim bloody portent for his day.

Cursing loudly and freely, he swung a sharp right at the end of the corridor, nearly slipping on a puddle of.. he didn’t want to know what. His loping stride devoured the next set of stairs swiftly and as he burst into the main foyer of the House of Sin, he cursed some more at the crowd gathered before him. Leather-bound deviants, hobbled, shuffled after those holding their leashes; small clusters of men and women hovered around trays heaped with epicurean and anatomical delights; patrons were peeking out from the fur-lined alcoves lining the chamber, most in various states of undress – and in one case at least, a state of fleshlessness – as they whispered among themselves; a devil’s cast of misshapen nightmares made manifest, interspersed with the more sanely shaped creatures that frequented these infamous walls. There were so many that in the warm brazen glow of the braziers around the room, the walls were visibly sweating condensation, the tapestries hanging limp and heavy.

And all of them were between him and where he was going. But above their heads he could make out some of his own men at the top of the twin curving staircases to the next floor. The House’s security such as they were, trying to keep order (a first in this place, surely) and hold back the more brave among the curious souls. Without hesitation, the lean Salvaran drew his dirk from the worn sheath at his equally worn belt and laid about him to clear a path. He used the pommel of the weapon, aiming for noses, napes of necks and any weak spot that would get these stupid bastards out of his way faster. Nails rasped over his bare arms as he forged a way through the incense-fugged antechamber, hands reached out to snag his clothes, his hair, to demand to know what was happening. Cadin bulled through them ferociously, lashing out and keeping his momentum.

He repressed a sneer of disgust as he recognised nothing in common with these creatures. The ones that hadn’t been fleshcrafted into bizarre and harrowing forms made the bile rise in his throat more than the others sometimes. He had seen the tastes indulged beneath these eaves – at least some of the monsters in here had the decency to look like monsters.

The alarms screamed above it all.

Finally, sweat sheening his skin with a sickly light, prickling as it beaded between his shoulder blades, Cadin made it to the cordon of his men. Harl and Edd, two of the stockiest, grabbed his arm roughly and pulled him through before turning back to keep everyone else at bay with a mix of shouted jeers and swiftly delivered hobnails. Cadin took a moment to catch his breath, running a callused hand over his slick brow and leaning on the wrought iron balustrade while he returned his knife to his belt. His gaze shifted to his hand on the railing and he grimaced as he noticed the minute tremors of the white-knuckled grip. He swallowed thickly, feeling the lump in his throat catch on the collar of his jerkin.

Snatching the hand to his side and taking a deep breath, Cadin looked to see if any of the boys had noticed it too; fortunately they were too busy fending off thrill-seekers and the terminally idiotic. Alarm bells ringing, and they move toward the source of danger. Can see how they wound up here, he thought with a bitter shake of his head at his own situation. Maybe he did have more in common with them than he thought.

“Harl!” he yelled, realising suddenly that only the bells, and his own men’s shouts, were competing with him for volume. The rest of the assembled degenerates advanced or indulged their voyeuristic tastes in near silence. Murmured whispers, audible only as an irritating susurrus of background noise, muffled queries from behind metal bits, or the occasional less identifiably human sound, were all that emerged from their ranks. The effect was unsettling.

“Harl,” he started again, his voice just loud enough to cut through the sonorous peals, “has anyone seen who-- what opened it?”

“Beats me, Cad, we heard the alarms same as you and made it – ugh -- hell for leather this way.”

The hirsute ex-soldier grunted as he had to swing the iron-shod cudgel in his hand in a threatening arc to keep the creeping tide at bay. They tried to crowd in even closer, whether looking to inflict or receive pain… one could never guess with them. A hand completely hidden beneath a heavy chain glove reached up for the veteran’s beard but a quick backswing had the gunshot crack of a broken wrist loud enough to be heard over the clanging cacophony.

“Then these Sway-damned whoresons started pouring in like lice,” he finished with a shrug that turned into an elbow when an elven woman with too many tongues tried to press up against him lasciviously.

Cadin let his eyes dance over the rest of his men as they fought to stem the flow of people now seeping out of the darker corners of the House. The hunger in their eyes was a forlorn and hollow thing, terrible for him to look at for too long even after these many years working beneath the roof. A dozen of his men, most of them either ex-military like Harl, or former Crimson Hand assassins, were holding the perimeter against it. Most of them already bore cuts, scrapes and bruises from the more enthusiastic revellers.

That meant he was left to deal with upstairs.

“Where are Gimmel and his monsters?” he asked no-one in particular. For once he’d almost welcome letting that lot deal with the problem. From nearby a.. man? Woman? - It was impossible to tell through the delicate folds of bone and quivering flesh that made up its face – warbled a high-pitched, reedy sound that could have meant anything.

“I wasn’t asking you, but thanks anyway,” he muttered darkly, letting one of his men detach themselves from the base of the only staircase winding up from here to shove the freak back, further into one of the many doorways thronging the landing.

“Did someone open it from the outside?”

“Doubt it, boss,” Pawel chuckled from near Cadin’s shoulder, manning this last set of steps. “You see any thumbs lying about?”

Cadin tried not to smile; it wasn’t hard. He remembered the vicious traps and enchantments placed on the door to the foul little sanctum that hung over them all. And the bloody mess it had made of the past few fools who had decided to chance their luck. Almost against his will he let his head rise ponderously to look up at the room above – dark, malignant, like a tumour hanging from the roof of the building; it loomed pregnant with the promise of unpleasantness within. Torchlight from the foyer below licked against the curving windows but there was no sign of life within. Hadn’t been for damn well over a year now. It sat like a blinded eye.

“Well, fuck it all,” he sighed, drawing his knife again reluctantly. He tried to ignore the doubt worming in his mind that a knife wouldn’t be enough.

“What? If the door wasn’t opened from out here, means there’s no-one in there, right?”

“Or it means whatever’s in there is trying to get out, Pawel.”

The dark-haired cutthroat chewed on that thought for a second. He drew a short hatchet from a loop at his belt as an afterthought. Cadin eyed it, doubting it would be enough either. They both looked up the staircase to the slightly ajar door of the office.

Something moved within.

“Fuck it all,” Pawel agreed.

The two of them set their boots on the first step and began their ascent.

Padding warily upwards, trying not to let their boots clatter too loudly on the metal stairs, the two men crept towards the heavy, iron-banded door with hearts in their throats.

Cadin, holding his breath without realising, shifted his clammy grip on the rough handle of his blade. He took the lead; not because he had any desire to, but because as the de facto leader of the House of Sin’s more normal workers he couldn’t let anyone else do so. Nervous eyes flicked between Pawel at his side and the door that was now an arm’s length away. The noise from below grated on his nerves as he strained to pick out any signs of life.

It was quiet inside now as far as they could tell. Neither was sure if that was better or worse.

They both paused for a heartbeat, steeling their nerves. Scanning the door-frame for any un-triggered surprises, Cadin finally managed to force his feet the last few steps and slipped silently into the Master of the House’s office. He turned to warn his companion in misfortune not to touch the door itself, but it was unnecessary – Pawel avoided contact with it like it was a serpent. He nodded wordless encouragement to Cadin and they were in.

The interior of the room was dim, almost murky, the one-way glass making up the right-hand wall of windows suffering scant illumination to intrude. Both men looked warily around, searching every shadow before they could bring themselves to move further in to the room. It looked much as it always had; bookcases lined one wall, filled to overflowing with all manner of tomes and grimoires; a heavily-scarred desk of dark cherry wood squatted menacingly to their left, the leather armchair behind it spilling stuffing from the myriad rents and tears – Cadin absently wondered how many atrocities had been planned by the tiefling in that mangled throne – with the stocked drinks cabinet in easy reach; a fireplace set in the wall, its embers long since dead and above that the gleaming, silver-framed mirror. Swallowing thickly, Cadin refused to look into the depths of that thing. He pointedly forced himself not to notice the slowly roiling miasma of green that shone from its face instead of the office’s reflection.

There was no sign of anything else living in the room. Peering into every shadowed corner, both men tried to assuage their nervousness, to convince themselves that they had been imagining things downstairs. But they wouldn’t risk breaking their silence. Both could still inexplicably feel eyes on them as they moved. From in here the screaming alarm bells were muted, distant. They felt isolated from the rest of the House, alone in here with the echoes of nightmares past.

Slowly, softly, they stepped further into the space, weapons at the ready.

Though it was furnished with relative finery compared to the tastes of the man who once occupied it, it seemed somehow melancholic now in its abandonment. There was still the sinister air hanging over the room but without the warlock himself there, it was a pale shadow of what it once was. The familiar memory of tobacco smoke teased the nose, but under that was a hint of something else. Like.. blood and vanilla? Cadin had heard Natalia and Gimmel, two of Aurelius’ most loyal fleshcrafted followers, whispering about how he dwelled now in the cavern hewn out beneath the sprawling grounds of the manse, but he may as well have taken up residence on one of the moons for all Cadin cared. Even if it was true (and most of the men had their doubts) no-one entered the Hole – no-one dared. After this much time, the devil could be dead for all anyone knew.

And would that be a bad thing? he thought, rubbing his hand across a stubbled jaw.

Stirring himself from his bitter reverie, Cadin tapped Pawel’s shoulder – the man jumped slightly, frowned – and jerked his chin to the far side of the room. Circling his hatchet slowly, the other man nodded and started towards the desk. His boots barely made a whisper as they crossed the thick rug on the floor, weight spread evenly on the balls of his feet. Cadin could see Pawel was taut as a bowstring, but then so was he. Keeping his eyes darting around for any hint of threat or danger, Cadin circled the opposite wall of the office until the windows were behind him.

Shaking snarled locks of hair from his eyes, the taller of the two men reached the narrow door set in the far wall behind the large escritoire – it led far down into the bowels of the building, to the tiefling’s personal pain chambers, left to rot along with the rest of his domain. The former assassin’s free hand inched towards it, hand-axe raised in the other, and he grasped the cold brass knob. Breathing shallowly, beads of sweat breaking out on his brow, Pawel turned it. But the door was locked tight. He started to turn back to signal as much to Cadin but a flutter of movement from the shadows beneath the table cut him short.

Cadin heard the soft rustling at the same moment and froze.

They stared at each other for a second, neither daring to move so much as an inch. Finally, mastering his hesitance, Pawel edged closer. Wary, eyes flickering between Cadin and the shadows coiled under the desk, the dark-haired worker laid a hand on the leather armchair. With a shallow inhale he dragged the seat out of the way and made to attack.

Something small and pale burst from the concealing darkness, flying at his face on tattered pinions with a shrill scream. Caught off guard, Pawel yelled in shock, flailed wildly with the weapon in his fist at the swift shape even as Cadin made to roar at him to stop; to try and avert what he could see unfolding before his eyes.

But it was too late. The haft of the axe took the diminutive creature from the air and sent it skittering along the floor of the office.

Oh, fuck, he thought.

From right next to Cadin’s ear, from where he knew no-one was standing a heartbeat ago, there came a low, liquid growl. The image of boiling treacle slid into his mind. The man started to turn, bringing his dirk up, knowing as he had earlier that it wouldn’t help at all. The smell was stronger now, pervasive. Opium and roses? The air shimmered, as a horizon punished by desert heat.

And it was then that all hell broke loose.

Was it his vision that returned first, in grainy, static flashes of black? Or did his ears finally surrender to the pervasive presence of the spongy, wet gurgling from across the room? Cadin was only sure that his mind was the last thing to catch up, like counting the heartbeats between the blinding sheet of lightning and its companion roar of thunder following behind.

The first clear thought to pass through his head was not a comforting one.

Why doesn’t it hurt?

It nagged at him, like a broken tooth. A splinter under the nail.

Sluggishly, his body like a marionette cast carelessly aside, he tried sitting up further. He didn’t remember sitting down to begin with, and yet here he was, back against the cool marble of the fireplace, legs splayed out before him beneath a cloying, damp weight. He blinked, once, then again more forcefully. He tried to persuade his eyes to show him something different than what he had been seeing for the past several moments, but they were not open for debate on the subject.

His intestines were sitting in his lap.

Again came the thought, the quiet mantra that his mind had latched on to as he had come to.

Why doesn’t it hurt?

Gritting his teeth, the Salvaran brought hands numb with cold to his gut, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch the looping spill of meat from within his torso, to probe the long, ragged incision in cloth, leather and skin. In the dim light, the weak strip of it brave enough to peak through the slightly ajar door of the office, he could see the spread of liquid black running off the fireplace, soaking into the carpet and smeared across his clothing. He could smell the abattoir reek of himself, felt his stomach curdle.

Not cold, then, the numbness. His head lolled forward before snapping upright, the knee-jerk reaction of someone catching themselves falling asleep. Bad idea, that. Falling asleep now seemed like it carried a promise of a much longer rest than Cadin wanted. His eyes finally managed to untangle themselves from the Gordian knot of his serpentine guts, casting about desperately for something else to focus on. Of course, he could hear the muffled chorus of weeping? Laughing? Some hideous blend of both? It was out of sight, other than the occasional erratic stab of shadow against the back wall of the room, and the odd, wet impact of something hitting the floor, the walls, the desk…

But he didn’t want to focus on that yet.

Instead, his gaze alighted on the only other form he could see from his vantage point. It was tiny, just a little scrap of flesh lying on the floor. Half of it that he could see was white – not just white, but the unhealthy pallor of something that had lived a life far from the touch of any sunlight. Livid stripes of scar-tissue criss-crossed the malformed little thing, shrouded beneath the broken curve of a black feathered wing. It was, at least once in its existence, a foetus; that much was clear, however much one might have wished otherwise. Cadin knew the little beast of course. Anyone who had had dealings with the tiefling lord of the House of Sin knew of it.

Junior, he had called it. The warlock’s pet, familiar, bastard child… the rumours were wildly varying as to where and how it had originally been procured, let alone gifted with the cruel mockery of life it possessed.

Had possessed? The disgusting little abomination wasn’t moving, not that Cadin could see.

Memories reasserted themselves slowly, smoke building in thickness within the confines of his mind. Little flashes of moments rendered clearly. He could see the arc of Pawel’s axe swinging towards the little monster. Could see it hit the ground and bounce, only once, skidding to a halt where it now lay. Yes, that was it. The other man had struck Junior, and then suddenly they hadn’t been alone in the room. Cadin had tried to turn, hadn’t he? He had, and then there came the horrendous ripping across his stomach, the cold fire plunging into flesh and muscle. Pawel had gone down almost the same instant, vanishing from sight behind the desk, beneath the pouncing weight of whatever had entered the room--

No, that wasn’t right. Whatever had attacked hadn’t entered. It had already been in the office, watching them. How could that be, though? They had scanned every inch. Nonetheless, it had to be the case; as soon as Junior had gone down, it was on them.

Junior. Something tried to click in his head, but his wounds were dulling his wits too much.

Even as he watched the broken familiar, feeling the sweat slathering his skin cool and become sticky – or was that the blood? – something else vied for his attention. Something just as pale as Junior, rising from behind the dark slab of the desk. It panted, fast and low, like something feral as it stretched to its full height, jerking spasmodically with the click of vertebrae and the subtle creak of leather. It sniffed the air and he could feel the weight of its attention settle on him where he was sprawled. Cadin tried to focus on it, could feel its familiarity, but even as his head turned the weight became too much and once again he found his field of vision filled with the stinking spill of offal. Was it still considered offal if it was his? Viscera, perhaps.

Why doesn’t it hurt?

More blood was leaving him, its progress marked by the small trickles joining together, tributaries connecting to become a river. Could he see, he wondered, his own heartbeats? Could he see each pump of the straining muscle in his chest purely by watching the expanse of his own lifeblood spreading over the off-white marble? Did he want to?

Cadin would never be sure if his consciousness had drifted for a bit, or if the shape now crouched before him had just moved that fast. It wasn’t there one moment, and the next, Cadin was eye to eye with the very half-devil he had only minutes before been silently wishing dead. It took two attempts to lift his head enough to properly meet the unblinking gaze only inches away from his face. He swallowed, not from fear – even if his mind hadn’t been too addled from blood-loss to feel it, his Salvaran pride would have forbade it – but to clear his mouth of the clinging taste of bile, and the metallic notes of blood staining his teeth. His eyes drifted slowly over the face of the man before him, taking in the details one by one rather than attempting to make sense of the whole picture that presented itself.

The hooks, the chains and pins and nails, the lacerations and piercings and ruin of meat and bone. The forked tongue lashing back and forth over his serrated teeth almost hypnotically. Even as Cadin watched he saw the black strip of muscle parting on the jagged tips, but still it went. Back and forth, back and forth.

“You look like shit,” Cadin grunted, trying to force a smile that was more grimace by the time it crossed his lips. He couldn’t keep his head up, and was glad to break eye contact with his boss as his chin touched his chest once more.

Aurelianus cocked his head to one side, the corners of his mouth peeling back further in a vicious grin. The skin gave way, loosing weak trickles of blood like ink down his gaunt cheeks. His face twitched, the muscles wracked with minute convulsions.

“Can’t say you’re lookin’ too shiny yourself, Cadin mate,” he chuckled, the sound thick and unhealthy. As he spoke, the tiefling reached a hand already stained with blood and other less easily identified fluids and stirred Cadin’s entrails. The human tried to bring a hand up to stop him, but the tiefling gently pushed it aside.

Why doesn’t it hurt?

“Bar that, cutter, I’m tryin’ to read.”

The half-demon crouched lower on the floor, his face getting closer and closer to the bowels leaking from his underling. Cadin tried his best to fight the feeling that Aurelius was about to start chewing on them. Instead, the tiefling’s eyes seemed to lose focus, a sick gleam coming across them despite how dry they must have been without lids. He sniffed, swaying slightly on his haunches as he stared intently at Cadin’s organs. His lips moved almost imperceptibly.

“You mind finding a fuggin’ book instead, you spooky bastard?” Cadin growled, mouth already thick again with the tang of copper.

“I can see it, cutter, can see it all unwindin’ away from ‘ere…” came the almost whispered response. Aurelianus seemed to snap out of a reverie, the muscles around his eyes giving soft tics as they reflexively tried to blink.

“Haruspicy,” he muttered, tongue still sliding wetly across his teeth.

“Harrow- what?”

Cadin’s eyes opened as he spoke, though he couldn’t remember having closed them. He was getting colder. And even with his mind as clouded as it was, he knew enough about wounds to know that was a bad sign.

“Shhhh, never you mind, me old son,” Aurelianus hissed, lips uncomfortably close to Cadin’s ear, warm and moist breath against the man’s clammy skin. This close, the smell from before returned to Cadin’s nose. Blood and vanilla and something else underneath it, the sickly sweet hint of rot. A tremor ran up the half-breed’s spine, and Cadin could have sworn he saw his skin shift and writhe where it stretched across his bones.

“You just sit back and let ol’ Uncle Aurelius sort you out.”

“Where’s Pawel?”

The question occurred to Cadin suddenly, and he felt a pang of guilt for not having thought to ask sooner. Maybe he was more akin to the monsters under this roof than he would have liked to credit.

The ashen-skinned warlock looked across the room, gaze wandering apparently at random up the walls and ceiling of the office as his smile took on a darker edge. Wire-wrapped hands curled into taut claws where they rested on his knees, tendons standing out against the scarred and raw flesh.

“’e’s around, cutter.”

The answer had a tone of finality to it that belied the casual amusement it was delivered with. Cadin didn’t press the issue. His tongue felt thick in his mouth.

“Now,” the half-demon purred, “let’s see if we can’t get these outsides back inside.”

He grabbed the slopping, gore-slick coils from the other man’s lap and, with an air of delight, started forcing them back into Cadin’s torso.

Why doesn’t it hu—

“OH, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”

Pain. It exploded across Cadin’s senses, filling every nerve ending with sparking, searing jolts and he finally found the energy to move, to flail, to try and grab the tiefling’s wrist as it burrowed deeper inside him. His head banged against the cold stone behind him, back grinding roughly against the bars of the hearth.

Finally, Cadin had an answer to his question. It only hadn’t hurt yet.

“Stop i—ugh! Fuck fuck! Get your hand out—bastard, shitshitshit – They won’t fucking fit, you whoreson bastaAARGH!!”

He bit down on his tongue to try and contain the scream, but all it did was spray bloody spittle across Aurelianus’ features. The bastard was still smiling, eyes catching what little light tainted the air and reflecting it back coldly. The devil’s free hand came up to latch on to the wounded human’s shoulder like a vice, pinning him back against the stained marble as he worked.

“Course they will, silly bugger. They came out, didn’t they? I’ll make ‘em go back in.”

There was another indescribable sunburst of agony twisting inside Cadin as slowly, one blood-glazed handful at a time, Aurelianus made good on his word.