The Broken World 3: Willow's Choice (Part 2)
Story by dorintf on SoFurry
The conspiracy is formed and the assassination is carried out, but nothing goes as planned and everything changes.
“I understand,” said Paneloux. “It is outrageous because it is beyond us. But perhaps we should love what we cannot understand.”
Rieux sat up abruptly. He looked at Paneloux with all the strength and passion he could muster and shook his head.
“No, Father,” he said. “I have a different notion of love; and to the day I die I shall refuse to love this creation in which children are tortured.”
--Albert Camus, The Plague
Bishop Jacobi’s favorite time of the day was the morning, for a host of reasons. First, it was the silence. It wasn’t that he disliked the hustle and bustle of the growing city, the laborers stoically going about their work, the shopkeepers setting up their meager wares, the children playing on their way to their lessons. True, he was always horrified by the groans of the slaves being beaten, the poor souls suffering every waking moment for the sin of being born in the wrong place, to the wrong parents, to the wrong god. With the blessings of his own god, he would one day soon turn their cries of anguish to songs of praise, their wails to laughter.
Morning was the time of the true god, when the father above silently opened his eyes to the world below, his smile beaming onto his unthankful children in the form of a vast celestial ball of fire that warmed their hearts and grew their crops. Or at least, it tried to. The morning dew was the true god’s tears, after a night spent weeping for the evil his children visited upon each other, a momentary pause of reflection in his eyes before he resigned himself to the vacant hope that they would be better to one another today than they were the day before.
On that account his hopes were always unfulfilled. His children would always visit every horror imaginable upon themselves. But the true god hoped that they would improve, and his faith sustained the Bishop’s own. Things would get better. They always would. They had to. The Vicar had made choices over decades of his rule that he would one day have to answer for, in a better world than this one. Jacobi frowned and said a silent prayer. One day, he too would be called before his lord to answer for his own sins, and the chief amongst them would be the one he would commit in a scant few days. It wasn’t often that a mortal sinner knew the time and place of his greatest offense. Jacobi wasn’t sure if he should feel lucky or ashamed.
Instead, he just felt tired. It had been a good life, a long life, one that would perhaps even be written about at some point. Jacobi would’ve felt honored to be mentioned as a footnote in the annals of the holy men and women of Ronae. To be confined to some dusty old tome, brittle leather cover flaking off as a young acolyte ran his hands across its worm-eaten pages as he searched for a more interesting book to peruse. Perhaps one with dragons. Whichever book that would host Jacobi’s name would not feature any dragons, nor grand adventures, nor daring rescues. It would feature blood and death, treason and heresy in the name of bringing about something better. But it would also feature something even more wondrous in these evil times that his home of Ronae found itself in.
It would feature good work, done in the name of the true god, for the most needy of his children. Whenever times were at their worst, it was always the very young that suffered the most--and there had never been an age that featured more evil than this one. It wasn’t that the end of days were approaching. They had already approached. They had approached, made their presence known, and left the world bereft of the foolish hope that sustained the whole of humanity as it obstinately fumbled its way through a universe so intent on turning it from the path of salvation to the throne of the god-down-below.
And so Jacobi had come here, to a city that had long ago succumbed to ruin, to a small abandoned church built in the glory of a god whose name was long forgotten, in order to create part of the better world that he still hoped to see one day. In truth, his faith had been shattered long before he crossed the threshold of the cavernous stony parish over a year ago. Whose faith wouldn’t be mortally wounded after the aftermath of the atrocities that had taken place in Nartor? On that day as his thoughts turned ever more from the true god’s work to the horrors that had been carried out in his name, Jacobi had almost tripped over the huddled form of a small boy, mistaking him for nothing more than a pile of garbage someone had deposited in the empty doorway. Bishop Jacobi assumed the child was dead, the only part of him visible being his tiny hand, palm up as if asking for a bit of coin, a scrap of food, a drop of rain. Instead it found only the warm hand and useless prayers of an old man who seemed to have arrived too late to help him. Jacobi was both startled and overjoyed to feel the young child’s hand twitch like a starving dog in its sleep, fingers like the wings of an injured dove silently asking what his tongue didn’t have the strength to say: Please help me. The bishop carried the child inside and nursed him back to health for the next three days, praying day and night that the true god would show mercy unto him, either in allowing the child to live or welcoming him into his arms in a better world than this one. A much better world.
On the second day, the boy’s sister had wandered into the church looking for him. By the third day, two more children had arrived. By the fourth, there were five. Jacobi had merely smiled and said that he supposed there was nothing else to be done. He had--without his own opinion being asked--been placed in charge of an orphanage. All were called in different ways by the true god, some by name, some by valor, some by birthright. And some, apparently, by tripping over the small huddled mass of a child in need.
There were seventeen children now. Seventeen souls left without a home, without parents, without a future. Most would say the lot was good for nothing but dying or being sold into slavery or conscripted into one army or another.
Bishop Elias Jacobi disagreed.
They were good at flipping over rocks and looking at the crawling creatures found scurrying beneath them. They were good at laughing at the simple, silly games they would play with one another. They were good at chasing each other, hiding from each other, singing with each other. They were good at laughing. As far as Bishop Jacobi was concerned, these activities were all they needed to be good at doing. His faith had been tested, nearly shattered, but he had been shown his new purpose, and he thanked the true god daily that he had crossed that threshold on that day. Through the grace of the faith assembled in this holy city and the generosity of the true god’s servants, the children would always have a place to call home. Jacobi would see them happy and safe, even if the god-down-below came knocking at the parish’s front door.
There was a knock at the parish’s front door.
It was a strange knock, loud and impatient. Yet almost bored, as if whoever was on the other side of the door was merely going about a task they’d rather not take part in. Likely it was another of the faithful, coming to inquire about one thing or another. There was always work to be done, even if it was of the sort that Jacobi himself refused to take part in. The Vicar’s business was being carried out with fervent adoration, and Jacobi knew it was only a matter of time before Nartor’s fate would be visited upon one of the smaller cities. Recent history would repeat itself again, the raping and the murder and the torture and--.
Jacobi frowned. No, he thought. It wouldn’t. He would make sure of that, and soon.
The knock came again, this time much louder, as if someone were pounding upon the door with a battering ram. Fear gripped Jacobi’s heart. They couldn’t have found out. Not yet. His foremost ally and conspirator wouldn’t have been careless. He couldn’t have been; it wasn’t in his nature to let any consideration escape his notice. But what if it had? Jacobi glanced behind him. The children were playing in the courtyard. If he were to be labeled a heretic and marched off to his execution, at least they wouldn’t be here to see it happen.
More knocking, somehow louder, interspersed with growling profanity and a strange scratching noise. Jacobi lifted his robes slightly and hurried to the door as fast as his ancient legs would carry him. “A moment, a moment!” The old bishop groaned as he pulled the heavy latch, his back screaming in protest as he pulled the parish door open. “Usually one of the children would open the door for me, but they are at play, and so you’ll have to excuse an old man’s …”
Whatever Jacobi was about to say vanished from his mind as soon as he saw what lay on the other side of the door. The bishop had practiced his faith for a long, long time. He knew the intricacies of his religion better than most. The dogma, the scripture, and the faith that sustained the faithful when the first two failed. And yet, he had apparently been wrong about one simple assumption for the entirety of his long life.
He had always assumed the god-down-below was male.
As he raised his head to look into the eyes of the being knocking on his door, he realized he had been incorrect. The adversary of the true god was female, and she was standing before him, here and now, literally on his doorstep. There was simply no mistaking her identity. It was the eyes. Those eyes could not possibly belong to anyone else.
The eyes spoke to him, silently and certainly. Come with me, they said. Alone, into the night, far away from the campfire, away from the sleepers, away from the watchers, into the dark, into the weeds, the bushes. Into the land where the trees and flowers have no names, where there is no one to name them. Come with me, naked and cold underneath the light of the moon. Come with me, just you and I, they said. Alone, with no one to bother us.
And I will tear you apart and devour you as I have every beast of the forest, every creature of the plains, every lost child since the sun first touched the world. Come with me.
The woman was massive, large enough that she had to stoop to lean her head into the parish. Jacobi certainly hadn’t invited her inside, but he supposed it wouldn’t have mattered if he had. Her lips curled back in a cruel smile, yellow teeth like that of a rabid dog almost reflecting the candlelight as a string of drool dripped from her lips. The hand that clasped the door frame was solid black; Jacobi had seen enough heretics burned at the stake to recognize charred flesh when he saw it. Oddly enough, the woman seemed unbothered by the injury.
Bishop Jacobi was going to die. That much was quite obvious. He wasn’t sure which of his many sins warranted a visit from the god-down-below herself. Perhaps he should’ve felt a little honored at the visit. But if she expected him to grovel, beg, or plead, she would be dissatisfied. He had spent the better part of five decades welcoming strangers into the true god’s house. If the demon expected anything different, he would see to it that she would be disappointed. He prepared to welcome her inside, and offer the god-down-below a drink of cool water mixed with mint and a shady spot in which to drink it. Instead, the creature cut him off with a question of her own, one that he would never have expected to hear from the lips of unfathomable, otherworldly horror.
“Hello, Father,” the dark goddess said. “Do you do weddings?”
Willow had grown fond of the steady clop of Miso’s hooves across the red sands over the past few hours and was more than a little sad when they came to a stop. Dyst took her reins and offered a hand to help the pair off of the large warhorse. The creature seemed as though she would rather be eating fruit in a meadow somewhere than riding from one pointless battle to another. Willow took the offered hand, more out of a show of gratitude than needing help dismounting. During the entire journey from the ruined house to the even more ruined city, she had attempted to hide her glee at the opportunity of riding atop a horse. For Willow and her partner, they might as well have been riding a dragon. Horses were more of a luxury than any precious gem that Willow had ever even heard of. Still, she didn’t want to let on to their host that for all the miles she had trodden, all the horrors she had endured, all the monsters she had fought, Willow was still filled with simple childlike joy at being given the opportunity to sit atop a horse. She also didn’t want to let the demon leading them to see her smile.
Don’t ever let her see you smile again, she thought. She doesn’t deserve it.
Her partner, however, was doing enough smiling for the both of them.
“Do we, um, maybe have time for a walk around the church?” Mongrel rocked back and forth, anxious to keep her seat in the saddle even as Willow’s feet touched the ground. Their monstrous captor was knocking on the imposingly large front doors of the parish as if eager to escape the sight of her captives experiencing any sort of happiness. “Just to, you know … survey the area? Make sure it’s safe and all? Want to make sure that the … perimeter is … um, perimetered. Right?” Mongrel leaned forward, her clawed hands tightening on the cantle. Willow was starting to wonder if they were going to have to pry her off of the saddle.
Dyst’s smile hinted that he understood the she-wolf’s reluctance to dismount. “Miso has had a long journey and could use some shade and water. That goes for all of us, I think. Even--”
The knocking had become pounding as Lura growled in annoyance.
“Even her,” he sighed. “Perhaps especially her.”
“Oh.” Mongrel bit her bottom lip with fangs capable of rending flesh from bone, though at the moment they simply marked her shy reluctance to part with the closest thing to a pet she had ever had. Willow realized for the thousandth time that she would never, ever stop loving this woman more and more every second of every day. “O-Okay,” stuttered the she-wolf.
“Come on, love.” Willow felt sure that if she could keep her partner half as happy as she had been this day then it would be a life worth living. Maybe after all of this was over they could “borrow” Miso for the journey home. It wasn’t like the Vicar would miss one extra horse, especially after he was murdered, and Willow couldn’t remember seeing her partner ever filled with such naked, honest joy. She also didn’t want the bitch loudly pounding on the doors to take notice of Mongrel being made so happy by the horse. It was likely that she’d kill the mare just to see the sorrow in her eyes.
Mongrel sighed and reluctantly swung one hairy leg over the beast’s back before dropping to the ground, as silent and reluctant as a cat giving up its place on the windowsill. Willow caught her and attempted to steady her, tugging her cloth mask over her face in order to hide her half-feral visage from anyone on the street. The parish was outside the city walls, but still close enough to attract attention. Once Willow had smoothed out her robes, Mongrel turned to the young priest. “If, um, you need any help … y’know, feeding her or-or brushing her or--”
“You’ll be the first to know.” Dyst smiled warmly at the she-wolf while throwing a quick wink towards Willow.
“Good!” She was trying to hide her glee and doing an absolutely horrible job at it. “Or even if you need someone to muck the stables! I’m not too proud that I can’t do some work around here … to repay you for the, um, hospitality.”
“Of course,” he replied. “I mean it in the nicest way possible when I say that I wouldn’t dream of shoveling horse shit without you.”
Satisfied that her partner was sufficiently covered in her disguise, Willow rubbed her chin playfully against her fuzzy cheek while whispering into her ear, “I love you, you strange, strange woman.”
Mongrel turned, started to tug her mask down to place a kiss upon her partner’s lips … and then swiftly turned again and almost fell over as she threw her arms around the neck of the mare, earning a startled neigh. “I love you, large smelly animal.” The motion had caused Mongrel’s veil to slip from her face. Dyst shook his head not unkindly before he led the no doubt confused Miso away.
Lura was now bashing both hands and occasionally her forehead into the door. “Gods below, open the door and get me out of here open the door open the door open the fucking--”
At last the door opened just a crack, enough for a wizened face to peer at the noisy intruder for one moment before quickly switching to the usual horror-stricken face that always came upon someone seeing the madwoman for the first time. Willow wondered if her own face held the same look the first time she’d met Lura, although she supposed her reaction may have been somewhat altered by having witnessed her father’s shredded remains a few seconds before.
“Hello, Father,” Lura casually greeted the understandably startled elderly priest. “Do you do weddings?” Despite Lura having her back to the rest of the group, Willow had no doubt her leering, feral grin was even now capturing the majority of the poor man’s attention, like a fox warmly welcoming a mole into its jaws.
“We, uh …” The bishop’s hands couldn’t decide whether they’d rather fumble with the latch, clasp the symbol of his order, or shake in frightened surprise. “Yes, well, we do but-but I-I-I usually ask for a few days’ notice. Our congregation is mostly concerned with the health and safety of the true god’s youngest children, those left orphans due to the recent … events.” He sighed, and actually somehow formed a smile. “But I have a feeling you aren’t one to take no for an answer.”
“No. I very much am not.” The words dripped like pus from a wound as Lura turned and gestured towards the others. “Besides, it’s a matter of grave importance. You see, there’s been a curse placed upon one of them. If she isn’t able to kiss her true love after exchanging her vows, she’ll be stuck in this form of a hideous monster, a terror to behold. As you can no doubt see by her loathsome, brutish mockery of a human face that the curse has already taken its toll.” She smiled at Willow. “Oh, also the other one is a dog.”
“I … see,” said the bishop, who most assuredly did not see. “I’m afraid that my faith has yet to entirely catch up with our more progressive sects. I won’t be able to marry you, but I know of a shaman that hides nearby whose own faith has less restrictions on …” Here he noticed Mongrel’s face, her fangs, her charcoal lips, her pointed ears. His response was only a simple, whispered, “Gods!”
“You can’t marry them because?” Lura seemed genuinely annoyed, her little game unable to progress.
“It’s just that-that they’re both--”
“Don’t say the ‘W’ word,” she warned.
“And-And one of them is a--”
“Don’t say the other ‘W’ word.”
Willow realized that she and her love had never actually discussed marriage. She fought off a giggle as she realized how silly the notion seemed. They had both long ago ceased to believe in gods--human gods, not the ones who waited in patient madness behind the stars--and the thought of swearing any sort of oath of marriage before them seemed comically unnecessary. The idea that a boring recitation of an ancient promise of fidelity taken from a dusty old book could mean anything more to them than what they already had was entirely absurd. They were mates, entwined for the rest of their likely short lives by bonds that had existed since the sun first rose, long before mankind had even dreamt of the concept of formal religious partnership. As if on cue, Willow felt her partner’s clawed hand slip into her own.
“Lura, enough,” Mongrel interspersed. Willow took notice that a look of confusion passed over the bishop’s ancient face. He seemed suddenly to be searching his memory for something. Willow wondered if he had heard the bitch’s name spoken aloud or if it had been erased from his memory just as it had from hers on that terrible day.
“Please don’t think I have a personal reservation,” the bishop added slowly as his attention seemed to return to the world around him. “All of the true god’s children are the same in my eyes, regardless of who they may be or whom they may love. It’s just that the faith still frowns upon those types of unions and I have the children to consider. We unfortunately depend entirely upon the patronage of less open-minded sects. Perhaps if the ‘curse’ could be persuaded to hold off for another few years, I could--”
“For the gods’ sakes, Elias, she’s fucking with you.” Dyst dusted his hands before removing his riding gloves, smiling as if the two were longtime friends. “Now can we please get out of this heat?”
An immense sense of relief seemed to pass over the old bishop’s face. “Oh, Father Dyst!” A look of annoyance came upon him for just a moment before he gave a warm smile. “Shame on you, making a fool out of a gullible old … fool. Come in, yes, come in.”
The invitation given, Lura slipped past the bishop in less than the blink of an eye. The bishop stepped aside to let the others pass. The remaining three weary travelers shuffled inside, Mongrel leaning heavily upon Willow’s shoulder in order to maintain the usual charade of a leprous wretch. Willow’s gaze was immediately drawn to the ceiling. Despite the rather modest size of the church, its rafters were somehow cavernous, the ancient wooden beams seeming brittle and fragile, as if the roof could collapse at any moment. She supposed the same likely held true for the religion itself. Its empty pews reminded her of the headstones she had seen surrounding the church. There were more dead parishioners attending the services than living. Mongrel whined beside her, likely entertaining similar thoughts. Now that they were out of the oppressive heat, Willow began to realize just how tired she was.
“Please, please, sit!” The bishop pushed past them, walking as quickly as his old bones would carry him to a corner near the entryway where he began to rummage through a rickety cupboard. “Some bread and a potato or two arrived from the garrison just this morning, and you’re no doubt parched. If I hurry you may be able to have some of it before …” The sound of dozens of small, unadorned feet grew louder, followed by the laughter of children returning from play. “Oops. Too late.”
There were perhaps a dozen-and-a-half of them, but to Willow and her partner there might as well have been a million. Neither had ever seen so many children in one place, and certainly not ones that seemed to have eaten in the past fortnight. There seemed slightly more boys than girls, which for some reason somehow seemed to Willow simultaneously odd and expected. Even more surprising than their lack of malnourishment was the fact that they seemed happy. Willow couldn’t remember the last time she had seen a child who wasn’t openly weeping or at least on the verge of tears. Even the boy in Sailor’s Piss. The one she had killed.
Understandably, the childrens’ first instinct was to draw to a halt, seventeen pairs of eyes opened wide in amazement at the bored giantess who was looking around for something to entertain her. For her part, Lura seemed entirely disinterested in the children, to which Willow couldn’t have been more grateful.
“Is that a monster?” one girl whispered.
Unfortunately, the second person that seemed to draw their attention was Mongrel. She had forgotten to cover her face, her lupine features on plain display despite the soft light of the parish interior, fangs protruding just slightly past nervously trembling black lips.
“No, THAT’s a monster!” a boy quipped, pointing in amazement at Mongrel’s bestial features.
Pointing in amazement. Not in fear.
Mongrel was immediately surrounded by a small onslaught of astounded children. “Um … hello?” Once the “monster” had spoken, the hesitancy seemed to immediately erode, and the she-wolf found her clawed fingers being grasped by tiny hands as the children turned her own hands over. They were endlessly fascinated by her claws, her furry feet, the fangs which were bared only in nervous display. Still, she couldn’t help but grin, which caused another momentary pause before the children gasped in amazement at the length of her fangs.
“She’s a troll!” one child proposed just above a whisper.
“No she’s not!” another corrected loudly. “She’s too pretty to be a troll! She’s like a … big dog?”
“A wolf!” another exclaimed.
“A wolf!” The words were repeated several times as a consensus seemed to be reached. “A wolf! A wolf!”
A small girl tugged on the tattered robe of the wolf in question. “My lady, are you a wolf?”
“Yes?” Mongrel timidly offered. “Sort of?” The tug at her hem caused her to lose her balance, causing her to drop to all fours to keep from falling. This only served to cause a round of gasps from the already amazed children, shortly followed by even more joyful laughter.
“Told you!” one screamed at another. “I TOLD you! A wolf!”
Suddenly, every child in the parish began to contribute to a cacophony of howls, snarls, and even a few barks, all of which echoed loudly off the high rafters as they proceeded to chase each other in circles around a very confused Mongrel. Lura simply growled and rubbed her tired eyes.
The she-wolf gave a laugh of her own before she decided to join in on the game with a howl of her own, albeit one much more feral, to the great delight of the children. The small girl that had first asked if she were a wolf wrapped her arms around her neck as if she had just discovered her new best friend. Willow laughed as she leaned towards Dyst. “Were all of these children made orphans from the war?”
The young priest nodded. “Yes. Well, most of them. A few were formerly in the ‘care’ of some of the … less pious members of the clergy.”
Willow’s smile vanished. “Meaning--?”
“Meaning they were saved by priests from other priests doing what priests do to kids.” Lura sneered as she strode to the front of the church and began rummaging through the altar, casually pulling apart the small lock that fastened shut the tabernacle.
“What some priests do,” Dyst clarified in a whisper. There was shame in his voice, mixed with just a touch of anger most unbecoming of a man of the cloth.
“Some priests,” Willow slowly prodded, “but not all priests?”
“He hasn’t,” Lura tossed back over her shoulder, nodding in Dyst’s general direction. “Neither has the old man. I’d smell it on them if they had.” For a moment she stopped her search for whatever it was she was looking for, just long enough to sneer at the approaching tired old bishop. “That kind of stench never goes away. As far as practitioners of a religion of genocidal nonsense go, they’re some of the better ones.”
Willow glanced at Mongrel as if to ask her to confirm Lura’s claim, but found the she-wolf was happily engaged in some kind of game involving clapping her hands in a complicated pattern with the youngest girl. She was having trouble with it, but seemed intent on continuing to try. Just when it seemed she was starting to master the intricacies of the game, she glanced at Willow and missed her turn.
“A very kind assessment,” Dyst finally answered Lura.
“And unfortunately a fitting one,” the bishop added as he took a seat in one of the pews. “One of the many sins our faith must answer for on the day of our souls’ judgment. Sins that have only grown in frequency after the fall of Nartor.”
“But sins that continue nonetheless,” Willow prodded. “Ones that you are going to put a stop to one day?”
Dyst gave a grim smile. “No. Sins that we have already begun putting a stop to. The burial we passed near the Sorrow Gate? Father Rictor. It seemed the poor father slipped at the top of the stairs leading to his bedchamber. He now finds himself in the true god’s arms, may all praise his holy name.” Dyst glanced at Jacobi, but neither seemed to be able to meet the others’ eyes. “And his wasn’t the first eulogy to have been read because of the work we are doing.”
“It is … grim work,” the bishop interjected. “A sin in and of itself--a grave one. But if some must pass into the claws of the god-below earlier than their appointed time? Surely that is the lesser sin compared to allowing the greater ones to continue. Even if it is the first among the true god’s servants. Even if it is a Vicar.” Willow wasn’t sure if he was stating a proposal or asking a question. He shook his head and added softly, “At least, that’s what I tell myself every night before sleep takes me.”
“The history books are filled with pages and pages of the names of those who have felt the same way, Daddy,” Lura added. “People who kill in the name of the greater good usually end up being the ones who need to be killed a few years later. I may be a murderer, but at least I’m an honest … Oh! Thank the squiggly, drooling gods!” Finally finding what she had been seeking, Lura extracted a large clay jug from a compartment near the bottom of the altar, tore the cork from the throat of the bottle with her teeth, and began guzzling its contents.
“I’m sorry, but that wine is sacramental! Used only for--” The bishop’s objection died as Lura turned her fierce eyes to him in warning like a hound protecting a bone. The monster didn’t need to stop for breath as she continued draining the large jug as a half-gallon of wine slid down her throat.
This, of course, captured the amazement of the children, whose awe turned from one she-wolf to another.
“She drank the whole thing! The whole thing!”
Lura tossed the jug over her shoulder. In the time it took to connect to the stony floor and shatter into a thousand pieces, she had already extracted another jug and was preparing to raise it to her lips when she felt the tug of a small girl’s hand on her pants leg. Lura looked almost amazed herself that the child would dare approach her.
However, whatever question the girl was preparing to ask would never be known, as Willow suddenly dashed towards her, lifting her into the air and cradling her as if she were protecting her from a lion. “No!” she screamed. “Get the fuck away from her!” She wasn’t sure if she was ordering the child or the monster.
Lura coughed and spat a wad of dark red phlegm on the foot of the altar. “What in the hells has gotten into you? I wasn’t even doing anything to--”
“You killed them!” Willow was shaking. The room seemed larger than it had a moment ago, and it was suddenly so hard for her to control her breathing. The child seemed so stunned by being so hastily grabbed that she wasn’t crying.
Lura turned her head to the side, a confused smile on her lips. “I … didn’t? They’re standing right over--”
“You burned them alive,” Willow gasped.
The monster blinked. “What are you even … Oh.”
Willow was half-surprised that Lura even remembered the event she was referencing. Her parents hadn’t been the only lives Lura had cut short that day. Willow was inside her home when the fire began, but she could still hear the screams coming from the burning barn. How could she not? Afterwards it had taken a day and a half to bury what was left of the bodies. The smaller graves were the first to be dug. The graves of the children. The survivors of Lura’s visit wanted them in the ground first, before the crows would land upon their bodies. It was the only mercy that could be afforded to them after what the madwoman and her demon master had done.
“I was …” Lura looked away as if searching for her next words. Was she about to offer an excuse for the murder of children? It seemed unlike her to even try, to even care. To her credit, she almost seemed upset. “I mean, Shade, it forgot that … You know what it …”
“You burned them alive,” Willow repeated. “I don’t give a fuck why you did it. You did it. You burned them alive. Children, women, and men. ‘It forgot?’ I saw the body of a girl no older than this one wrapped in the arms of her mother’s charred corpse.” Out of the corner of her eye, Willow saw Jacobi staring at Dyst in shock. “No reason you could give could ever justify that. So just … stay away from them, okay? I don’t want you anywhere near them. You’re a fucking monster.”
“And you’re with her.”
Willow looked to her side. The tallest of the children was stepping forward, ignoring the madwoman entirely as he strode towards her. He stood a head taller than the second tallest child, his hair the color of gentle flame and arranged in a bowl haircut adorned with an absolutely atrocious rat’s tail. Willow found on his face the stern look of cold command that would serve the lad well one day, whether he went into the army, enlisted as a mercenary, or gods forbid joined the clergy. He stared Willow down, even casting a glance at Lura as if she were of no threat at all.
“So what the fuck does that say about you?” he questioned.
“He’s got a point.” Lura seemed eager to turn the conversation away from her. “You’ve got blood on your hands, too, from what I’ve heard.” She smiled at Willow, and her cruel smile immediately hid whatever shreds of remorse Willow had almost seen. “Something about a slaver’s boy back in Sailor’s Piss? All three of us are monsters, Tree-Cunt. The only thing separating you from me is sixty years. After that, well … Give it a little more time and children will be having nightmares about you, too.”
“Shut up.” Willow was surprised that she hadn’t been the one to say it. The boy crossed his arms as he stared down the demon with a bravery that can only be mustered by a child of fourteen winters. “I don’t know why Bishop Jacobi let you in. I don’t care. None of my business, and I always trust his judgment. But you start scaring my friends? Even think about hurting them?” Now it was his turn to spit on the stone floor. “I will fucking end you.”
A gasp of utter terror came from the other children, who seemed as shocked by the use of the curse word given by one of their own as they were by the appearance of the three strange travelers.
“Put her down,” the youth ordered Willow. “All of that goes for you, too. And the werewolf.”
Willow nodded and put the small girl down, smoothing her simple but clean dress before she fled back to the other children. “I didn’t mean to scare her. Or you. I’m sorry. You’re the one who looks out for the others?”
The boy nodded. “That’s right.”
“Good,” Willow replied. “Keep it up. What’s your name?”
“Pit,” he answered simply. It was just as likely this was his actual name as it was that it was a nickname.
Lura smiled. “I like this one.” She returned her attention to the second wine jug as she began draining it just as fast as the first, though she did pause halfway through to add, “I’m not going to kill her, kid.”
“You aren’t going to kill anyone.” Dyst’s footsteps echoed throughout the empty chapel. “No one in this church. Not a single soul. Not them. Not us. No one. There'll be plenty of killing to be done before this partnership is over. But if you so much as cough in the direction of one of the children entrusted into my care … Well, it will end very badly for you. Is that clear?”
The murderer almost paused before she merely shrugged her wide shoulders and resumed draining the bottle.
His thumb slid over the pommel of his sword, though he still kept it nested in a scabbard that likely cost more than all of the fish Willow’s father had ever sold. “I won’t ask for your word, because I assume you value it as little as anyone else would. But I assure you, I will see you dead if you so much as think about harming these children.”
Lura shook the last drops of wine from the bottle, letting it drop on her long tongue before again tossing the empty jug over her shoulder. Her pupils narrowed on the young man, who despite his bold words still took a step backwards. “I very much doubt that, Father.”
“Make no mistake, I have every confidence you’d kill me, and Bishop Jacobi, and the children in less time that it would take for me to finish this sentence. But word would get out.” He shifted from one foot to the other, the clops of his boots almost as loud as Miso’s hooves. “Soon enough, you’d have four legions of the true god’s soldiers hunting you for the rest of your life. The closest thing to an empire left in the world, and every beating heart sworn to hunt you down like the dog you are and bring you to the lord’s justice. No sleep. No rest. No escape. And then when we meet again in the ninth hell?” There it was again, that infuriatingly bright smile. “I’ll be waiting there for you.”
She took a few steps further, walking on the balls of her bare feet, as silent as a mouse’s breath, before leaning close and whispering, “Is your order celibate?”
Dyst blinked. “I’m … not sure I understand what … What?”
“I’m asking if you’d like to fuck.” Her yellow fangs dripped with saliva as she added, “That little speech was strangely arousing. I’m kind of wet right now.”
Bishop Jacobi coughed loudly to draw attention to himself. “Well! This is a wondrous exchange and I’m sure we’re all quite happy to have experienced it. However, children, it’s past time for lessons.” The conflict was immediately forgotten, lost in the groans of protest summoned like an eldritch beast by the assembled orphans. “Yes, yes, reading and arithmetic--just the absolute worst things ever. Let’s take our lessons in the courtyard today.”
The children hung their heads like criminals on their way to the gallows as they followed the old bishop, feet sliding across the cold stone tiles as if burdened by a heavy weight. But just as all hope seemed lost, Jacobi began singing a hymn in a quiet, off-tune voice that banished the dreariness like sunlight through morning fog.
-Sing in the morning, for our god hears us-
-Waits by our side as the light grows near us-
-Takes now our hand as our foes shall fear us-
-For the true god loves us all-
-Ere the noon comes one and all he hears us-
-Lo in the dark still his light warms near us-
-Safe in his arms his children his dearest-
-For the true god loves us all-
“Please kill me,” Lura whispered as the singing drew fainter as the children filed into the courtyard. “True god, god-below, the blind gods, the spooky shadow fucker, I don’t care which. Will some fucking god please, please kill me.”
Mongrel seemed sad to see them go. Willow took a seat on one of the lonely pews, holding out her hand for her mate until she hopped onto the seat and stretched her legs down the length of the bench. The she-wolf lay her head in Willow’s lap as her fingers threaded through her thick, tangled hair.
“They weren’t … afraid of me,” Mongrel whispered. She closed her hand, her claws poking lightly into her palms as Willow placed a kiss on top of her head. “Didn’t hate me or look at me with pity or say that I’m gross.”
“No one ever should, dear heart.”
“That was nice,” Mongrel said simply.
“Yes, we’re all filled with warm and fuzzy feelings from experiencing the simple childhood wonder of meeting a furry monster for the first time.” Lura hopped up onto the altar, letting her long legs sway as she dug into her ear with her small finger. “That’s really great. Just the best. Now how shall we go about killing a living saint?”
Willow sighed. “For once, could you please--”
“No, she’s right.” Dyst began to pace back and forth in front of the altar. Willow got the feeling this was a frequent activity of his. “The sooner this is taken care of, the better. The Day of Want is three days from now. Servants will be preparing food, slaves will be cleaning, clergy will be praying. We couldn’t ask for a better time to strike.”
“See?” Lura stuck her tongue out at Willow. “Daddy agrees with me. He loves me more. You cunt.”
Dyst cleared his throat, though he flashed a smile at Lura that made Willow wonder if he wasn’t slightly more receptive to her advances than he let on. “The Vicar has set up his offices in the old city hall.”
“Really?” Mongrel raised a brow. “I would have thought he’d want to make his home in whatever church is the largest in town.”
Dyst nodded. “Normally, yes. But the largest churches were ransacked in the riots that followed …” He cast a glance at Lura, who returned an innocent, lupine grin. “In the riots that followed the city’s fall decades ago. The city hall has a balcony that overlooks the town’s center--a large open courtyard that will serve as the place of gathering for the banquet that precludes the fasting during the Day. It also serves as a pulpit for his sermons and when he offers his holy decrees to the people.”
“Whenever he wants to let the flock know which foreign nation the sky-father has declared must be eradicated this week.” Lura plucked a candlestick from the altar and began peeling the wax away.
“Again, that is not entirely inaccurate.” Dyst nodded to Lura. “That may be an avenue for you to carry out your … task. The balcony is on the top level of a four-story building. A fall from that height would certainly--
“Ohhhh, fuck no!” Lura seemed deeply offended. “Fuck no. I prefer things up close and personal whenever I’m slaying a living demigod. It’s not fun unless I get brains on my fingers.” Her tongue wet her lips.
“Of course,” Dyst offered. “I just thought that might be the easiest way to carry out the task. But I will defer to your expertise on such matters.”
“She’s good at what she does,” Willow offered darkly.
“Thanks, sis!”
“How do we get in?” Mongrel asked. “Lura and I can scale the walls, but …”
Willow realized that as far as Shade was concerned, Mongrel and she really didn’t even need to be there for the assassination. It was what would come after where they were needed.
Lura shook her head as she seemed to have the same thought. “All three of us have a job to do on this magical murder adventure. I’ll kill the old bastard, then the three of us search his quarters for …” She glanced at Dyst. “Something of interest.”
Now it was Dyst’s turn to raise a brow. “And is this ‘something of interest’ a something-of-interest I should be made aware of?”
“No,” the bitch plainly answered.
“It’s not going to be a problem for anyone in the city, Father,” Willow clarified. “I promise you that.”
Dyst turned to look at Mongrel. “Can you vouch for that?”
The she-wolf nodded. “It won’t hurt anyone.”
The young priest held her gaze for a few moments longer, then nodded slowly. “Then I won’t inquire further.”
Willow was surprised and more than a little happy that the young priest believed the word of her mate over herself or the demon perched on the altar.
“If it’s not in his office,” Lura continued, “then the two of you will look elsewhere.”
“I still don’t know what the fuck we’re looking for,” Mongrel muttered.
“You will when you find it.” Lura’s kind smile was almost endearing. “I promise that. Meanwhile while you’re doing that, I’ll hold off the guards that will have gotten wind that something is wrong with the Arch-Daddy. You two search while I help them to enter into their true god’s kingdom--claw by claw, tooth by tooth. We’ll give it about an hour. After that, if you haven’t found anything then there isn’t anything to find. We shelve the side project until the next time we have to kill a demigod. Shouldn’t be more than fifty, sixty years?”
“You’re going to hold off the entire pontifical guard,” Dyst said slowly. “For an hour? By yourself?”
Lura shrugged. “As long as I don’t get too bored.” She smiled at Dyst again. “Unless I finish a little early and you have some other idea for what I can do for the next hour?” She bit her bottom lip, her expression mock-shy, like a harlot pretending to be a maiden.
Dyst tried to hide a smile of his own. “I … may have an idea, yes.”
“Okay, so that’s what we do when we get in,” Willow interrupted. She had never felt more like she needed a bath than at that moment. “What about actually getting in?”
The young priest cleared his throat and quickly turned his eyes away from Lura. “That will actually be easier than you may suspect. The entire building is riddled with passages in between its walls. Some so that the servants wouldn’t be seen, some for escape passages in the event the city’s former rulers found themselves under attack.”
“As I recall, it didn’t help them too much last time,” Lura muttered as she began to pick the dirt from underneath her sharp fingernails.
“You can get us all the way to his chambers?” Mongrel asked in disbelief.
“Not a problem.” The young priest seemed as concerned as if she had asked him to carry Willow’s backpack.
“Just how high up the clerical ladder are you, Father Dyst?” Willow had grown to trust the man in their time together, but still found herself more than a little surprised at his claim.
“Higher than I ever wanted to be,” he answered tiredly.
Lura clapped her hands. “This is fun! This whole planning thing. Normally I just run in, slashy-slashy, bitey-bitey, and I’m done. I knew traveling with you two unfathomably insufferable cows was going to be worth it. So when are we doing this? Right now?”
Willow was relieved when Dyst shook his head. “It will take me a few hours to arrange things. I’ll have to alter the orders of a few of the guards, pay off a few dozen others, and arrange for the absence of more than a few others in less wholesome ways. The Vicar always breaks his fast just after dawn. After that, he prays for the next half hour or so before he begins the day’s work in earnest. He hates to be disturbed during his prayers and plotting, and the servants are very aware of this. They always wait at least an hour before clearing his dishes. That’s the moment to strike.”
“That’s fine.” Lura shrugged. “Time for some shuteye then.” With this she lay down on the altar of the true god, lay down with her face turned to the others, and closed her eyes. “Suggest you two do the same.” Willow half expected her to begin snoring, but instead she pointed towards a corner of the room with her eyes still closed. “Is that going to be a problem?”
The others turned just in time to see a flash of red as Pit disappeared around the corner of the archway leading to the courtyard. Willow hadn’t noticed, but the boy must have been spying on the entire conversation.
“No,” Dyst chuckled warmly. “Not at all, actually. Pit is very protective of the other children. If he was spying on us, it was only with their benefit in mind. And he would cut off his own head before putting Bishop Jacobi or myself in any danger.”
“Good,” Lura answered dreamily, already drifting into unconsciousness. “Would rather not disembowel the kid. He’s cute.”
“How very kind,” Dyst returned before turning to Willow and smiling. “I’ll talk to Jacobi about finding something soft for you and your partner to sleep on. I imagine it’s been a while since either of you have had a pillow underneath your head.”
Willow returned the smile and she rose and took a few steps in the young priest’s direction. “That would be wonderful, yes. Also, I don’t suppose you can spare the water, but is there any place I could wash up? I didn’t see a spring or pond on the way over, but--”
He shook his head, though he kept his smile. “I will absolutely not have you wading into a stagnant pond like a duck. I’ll have Pit and some of the older boys fetch a tub and warm some water.”
“You are now my favorite person in the world.” Willow felt elated at the prospect of a warm bath. “Absolute favorite person. Just don’t tell--”
Willow turned towards her mate, only to find that she had silently slipped away.
“M? Bath? Where in the hells did she …?”
With a soft laugh, Dyst pointed towards an open side door. “She slipped out the side door.”
“That leads to the--”
“The stables, yes.”
Willow shook her head.
There were villages, then there were towns, then there were cities. And then there was Ronae. Willow felt as though the entire world could’ve fit into one of its districts. The oldest building she had ever seen was in Haley’s Rest, just a few weeks after she set out on her mad quest to kill the woman she was now following around like a dog. The church seemed ancient at the time, a relic from a long ago epoch before the world had ended. Or the second time the world had ended. She wasn’t sure at the time--or now--what god it was built in service to. The people here seemed to follow the true god, though she was of course sure at this point that no god was really true. Only blind and hungry.
She had been as mistaken about the church as she seemed to be about everything else. The most recently constructed building in Ronae, the tiniest garden shed, the cobblestones of the alley in which she now passed--all were ancient when that church was newly built. There was more history here than the rest of the continent combined, more tales, legends, monumentally important events now rendered entirely meaningless by the passage of time. Willow wondered how many libraries existed that held tomes detailing Ronae’s histories, and how many of its newly-settled citizens had the capacity to read them.
Likely not many, and certainly not Willow or her love. She wondered if the madwoman leading them had perhaps had a better education in whatever ruined town she had been born into. She doubted it. The only real instruction she’d ever received was around the candlelight of her kitchen table, her father teaching her to fish and her mother teaching her to never listen to anything her father said. But thoughts of home caused Willow pain that she would never escape, and so she turned her thoughts to the present.
There were churches everywhere, steeples pointing like accusatory fingers to the heavens. If Jacobi’s faith held any truth whatsoever they would’ve been built to worship their true god. Why was it necessary for there to be a church on every block? Were there really that many people before the Tear that so many churches were needed? It seemed there was more to the world than Willow would ever know, and she was becoming more and more certain that she was better off not knowing most of it. Other than the hunt for the demon and meeting her partner, every other past event seemed to be the result of or the cause of one ancient misery or another.
The city was surrounded by a wall that must have been fairly impressive once. Father Dyst had said it was impregnable in its day, one of the wonders of the world. But in some spaces the base of the wall was only a dozen feet above its crenellations. Willow wasn’t sure how that repelled scores of armies, but she supposed a well-aimed crossbow bolt was enough of a deterrent under most circumstances.
As ancient as the churches, inns, and stables seemed, they were just as empty. War had ruined the city, and had continued to ruin it over the years. First the event Lura had called the Tear, then the … other Tear. And then finally it had fallen at the hands of Lura, whatever her role may have been. This wasn’t the bitch’s first assassination in Ronae. It probably wouldn’t be her last. She had spent so much time murdering here that she would probably do well to rent a small chamber somewhere within the city’s walls.
And of course, they were currently walking through the city’s newest travail. The Day of Want--whatever that meant--had descended upon the ruins of Ronae like flies swarming a dead rat. Willow wasn’t sure how the true god’s faithful planned on feeding this many travelers, but she hoped she wouldn’t be around long enough to find the answer to that question. They had passed what must have been hundreds of poor wretches in search of meaning, and their path hadn’t even taken them to the city’s central courtyard where surely more were gathered. No, their route was one frequented only by rats, traitors, and ghosts.
And werewolves. Mongrel coughed violently as they stepped down a small cobble staircase into what Willow assumed had at one point been part of the city’s “sewers”. Dyst had told them that at one point the city was host to an elaborate tunnel system that would carry one’s waste from inside some of the larger buildings into the nearby Leht River before depositing it into the Bay of Wills. It wasn’t a common household luxury, but the inhabitants of the city hall and some of the larger manses enjoyed the ability to do their business indoors without worrying about traveling to the outhouse at night, fumbling without any sort of lantern for the latch and praying not to be bitten by an asp in the darkness.
They could shit indoors. In a warm building. Indoors inside a warm building. Indoors. And the city itself would dispose of it. Willow was more amazed by this than anything else they had thus far encountered in the city. She hoped that this Traitor of Man was being buggered in the ninth hell for all eternity for his part in denying her the experience of indoor defecation.
Dyst motioned for them to follow them into a dark tunnel. Willow looked to the coughing she-wolf, who was already nodding that she was okay. The smell of ancient muck and filth would’ve bothered her even more than Lura. Darkness soon enveloped them, though of course neither Mongrel nor Lura seemed particularly bothered. Willow was soon functionally blind. A loud clatter indicated that Dyst seemed to have stumbled into something. The curses being muttered under his breath seemed very unworthy of a priest. Willow was slowly starting to like him.
“Should we have brought a torch?” Mongrel spoke in a whisper as if she were afraid of calling attention to herself.
“No,” answered both the priest and the maniac.
It was Dyst that elaborated. “It’s not far. Just a bit further. Feel along the wall to your right, there should be a … Ah. Here we are.” Willow heard the sound of old wood being scratched across older stone as the priest moved something large out of the way. “I’m not sure what sort of servant was supposed to use this passage. Someone responsible for cleaning the drainage ditch I suppose. Or maybe it really was an escape tunnel, though I think they would’ve picked a more sanitary spot when they built the place.”
Willow could hear Lura yawn in the darkness. “This will take us to the top?”
Dyst was silent, which probably indicated he was nodding, though only the she-wolves could see it. “The very top. There’s a bit of rubble on the second floor that you’ll want to take care to walk over. Not sure what could’ve caused it, but it isn’t too hard to step around, even in the dark.”
“Where will you be during all of this?” Mongrel beat her mate to the question.
“Back the way we came,” answered the young priest. “Then through the front gate, where the rest of the brethren expect me to be. Most of the pontifical guard will be running drills in the inner courtyard. Those not on duty, of course. The Vicar hates anyone near him these days except his personal guard and the servants who bring his meals and … other tasks you might be aware of soon enough.”
Willow felt her mate’s soft touch on her leg from where she crouched. She didn’t need to be able to see in the dark to tell what expression she held. It was the same on Willow’s face as she looked in what she hoped was the she-wolf’s direction. Why are we here? she silently asked.
Because you wanted there to be something more to life and to creation than random chaotic nonsense. Because you had to see the bitch’s god. And because I had to track my parents’ killer across leagues to plunge a dagger into her throat. Because we’re fools.
“Tree-Cunt won’t be able to see,” Lura added. “I’d offer her to take my hand, but--”
“Not going to happen,” Willow hissed.
“Not going to happen,” Lura agreed. “Dog-Girl needs all four Dog-Girl-paws to crawl and I don’t want you fumbling around in the dark. So how do you want to handle this?”
Willow found herself somewhat concerned that there wasn’t any sort of petty malice in Lura’s voice.
“I’ll change,” Mongrel offered. “She can hold onto my tail.” Willow felt a gentle squeeze around her ankle, her partner reassuring her of her presence.
“I’m reasonably sure the trap doors in this place weren’t designed with Gahreer in mind,” Lura returned. “You’ll have to change back to this form, then change again when the pointy things come hurling towards us. And then you’ll have to get small again to fit through the trap door? That’s too big of a risk. I don’t want to get stuck up there waiting on you to change forms for the seventeenth time.”
“You’re worried about swords and arrows?” Mongrel asked. “You?”
“Not for me,” Lura answered flatly. “The Tree-Cunt could be hurt.”
Willow’s breath caught in her throat. Out of all the things she expected Lura to say, concern for her wellbeing was not one of them.
“I …” Willow cleared her throat. “Fine. I’ll hold your hand.” The hand that killed her father. The hand that killed her mother. The hand that had snapped her best friend’s neck. She extended her hand into the darkness, feeling as if she were sticking it down the maw of some unknowable beast. When she felt Lura’s hand take hers it felt warm, her touch almost gentle. If Willow didn’t know to whom the hand belonged and what it had done to hundreds of people, it would’ve almost been normal.
The thought evaporated as Lura started merrily swinging Willow’s hand back and forth as if they were children on the way to play. “Sisterrrrrrrs!” she squealed in a high pitch.
“Fucking stop,” Willow warned.
“I have business on the top floor today,” Dyst thankfully interrupted. “Which is fortunate. Won’t arouse suspicion. While I’m there, I’ll strike up a conversation or two with a few of the guards posted at the end of the hallway leading to the Vicar’s chambers. You’ll be able to slip into the hallway by crawling through a small tunnel on the third floor. It’ll bring you to a ladder that will take you to a stone tile in that same hallway--just around a sharp bend where you won’t be seen. When you reach the top of the ladder, remember--left, not right. We only get one shot at this, and--”
“I’m a professional, Daddy,” the monster interrupted. “I know what I’m doing. I just wish I knew about this place the last time I was here. We’ll be in and out. Five minutes at the most.”
No, they wouldn’t. After the deed was done, they’d have to split up and find the artifact that almost certainly didn’t exist. The one that would surely fail to kill a mad god. Although she supposed such an artifact could not-exist in the Vicar’s chambers just as easily as it could not-exist in his storeroms.
Lura whispered in what Willow assumed was Dyst’s ears, “Just make sure that when we’re back to the church that your ‘in-and-outing’ lasts considerably longer than five minutes.” She gave a low growl. Mongrel made a retching noise, and Willow was suddenly happy she wasn’t able to see where the bitch’s hands were being placed.
Willow was only slightly out of breath by the time they reached the ladder leading to the fourth floor. Although she thought she was being fairly silent, she could feel her heart beating loudly enough that she feared she would awaken the ghosts that surely lingered here. The entire trip up the stairs, Willow kept trying to remember which of Lura’s hands was the one stained black from trying to assault the shadow. For some reason she hoped it was her normal hand that she was holding, though she supposed either would’ve been equally repulsive.
When they drew to a stop, Willow wasn’t quite sure how she should proceed until she felt Lura’s hand leave her own, only to feel both of them gently press on her shoulders to turn her in what must be the direction of the ladder. Once she felt Lura softly guide her forward, Willow took one step, then another, before awkwardly bumping her forehead on a stone wall. Lura’s stifled giggling was overshadowed by Mongrel’s warning growl as she rose onto her legs to turn Willow in the right direction.
All Willow wanted to do was to stab her. That really wasn’t so much to ask, was it?
She could barely hear Lura’s bare feet touch the rungs of the ladder. Mongrel pressed Willow’s hand into the bars, giving it a reassuring squeeze before Willow also started to climb. Her boots made slightly more noise, but were weathered enough that it wouldn’t have been noticeable by any guards on the level above.
As if some angelic spirit were descending from the heavens, Willow was suddenly enveloped in golden light as Lura casually lifted the stone hatchway with one hand, peering through the inch-wide gap into the hallway above. She motioned to follow with her other hand before leaping off the rung through the trapdoor and into the torch-lit passage. Willow ascended the last few rungs and managed not to grimace too much as Lura held her hand to help her up. The seal broken, Willow reluctantly took the hand and was lifted like a kitten by its mother. Mongrel clambered into the hallway a moment later. As Lura placed the stone tile to the side, Willow stared down the hallway in the direction they weren’t supposed to go, listening to the voices of three men speaking just around the bend. She thought one of the voices could belong to Dyst, distracting the guards as promised.
Now again on solid ground, the trio crept in the direction of the single most impressive door Willow had ever seen. Indeed, she would never have thought to ever use the word on a collection of planks separating one room from another, but the dark wood seemed imposing, a particular feeling of dread seeping through its stained exterior. Lura seemed almost bored, her default state of being, as she pressed the door open, peeking inside before motioning to the others when it seemed safe.
And then the smell assaulted her. Willow covered her face to keep from coughing. Mongrel gave a quiet whine as she forced her eyes away, and even Lura seemed bothered by the stench.
Human feces. The chamber of the most powerful man in the world smelled of human feces, an overpowering stench that couldn’t even be covered by the staggering amount of burning incense in the chamber.
The Vicar sat at the end of a long table, a few candles placed here and there barely illuminating the room. It was far too dark for Willow to make out any of his features from this far away, other than he seemed far older than any man she had ever encountered. The trio slipped further into the room, easily sticking to the shadows as they approached. When she was close enough to the half-dozing figure she had to fight to keep from laughing. Not at the condition of the man, but at the sheer absurdity of this being the source of so many of the world’s woes.
His face reminded her of a dirty rag, one wadded up and forgotten underneath sacks of grain until it became stiff and smelly. His fingernails were longer than Mongrel’s, filthy and brittle so that it was hard to tell where they ended and his fingers began. His robes were the only indication of his station, as pristine and pure as their owner was disheveled and wretched. He didn’t seem to be breathing at all, and for a moment Willow wondered if their grim task had already been carried out by the passage of time.
And then his heavy lids opened, milky white eyes searching in the dim light, sensing the trio’s approach though not yet sure how close they were. He whispered a word from lips like twisted driftwood, the worst stench Willow had ever endured slipping past them like the breath of the god-below himself as he asked but a single word.
“Wipe?”
The Vicar was not a demon from the ninth hell. Just an old man, filthy and alone in a world that had no further use for him. Willow’s eyes met her mate’s before she could ask the question again: what are we doing here?
And then the pale eyes found them, and Willow was reminded of the horror she felt when she had first met Shade’s gaze. There was a hint, the tiniest spark yet remaining, of the terror this man had once inspired, the plans he had set into motion, the orders he had given that had led to the deaths of so many. For the merest instant, he was there once again: the Vicar. Not an old man dead before his heart stopped beating. The Vicar.
The moment lasted for a half a heartbeat before Lura was upon him.
The man’s nose was no longer attached to his face. He hadn’t the strength enough to cry out in what must have been unendurable agony. A second later, his jaw was suddenly disconnected from the rest of his skull, his tongue hanging flaccidly, drooping from what was left of his neck until it stained the top of his robe with crimson. And then his head was suddenly gone, collapsed in upon itself, a hole in his regal breakfast chair the only indicator of where it once existed.
“Praise and amen,” the demon whispered as she wiped the blood from her hands on his white vestments. “That was certainly anticlimactic.” For some reason she looked underneath the table, under his robes, around where tiny pieces of his wrinkled pate remained. “Where’s his hat? Don’t they always have a hat? I’m keeping his hat.”
“Gods-fucking-below,” whispered Mongrel, shrinking away from the madwoman with a fear she had likely almost forgotten. “L-Lura …”
“Yes?” Lura sighed. “Problem?”
“Y-Y-You didn’t have to … I mean … All of that?”
She shrugged. “Thought he deserved something worse than a swift death. All the pain he’s caused? It was more merciful than he deserved. And it was certainly a death worth bragging about in whatever hell he ends up in. When I go I hope mine is half as good as--Ah!” She squealed happily as she lifted from a nearby table the object she sought, a miter inlaid with gold and jewels more precious than anything Willow could ever hope to behold. Spinning around, she held the miter forward in both hands, thrusting it towards the pair as if to draw attention to her trophy. “Hat!”
A chill wind sprang from nowhere, blowing out the few meager candles. Oddly enough, the room now seemed brighter to Willow than it had a moment ago, as if there were a bright glow emanating from the other side of the room. With dawning horror, she realized what that meant.
The shadow had arrived, blocking the entrance to the chamber from whence they had come. Its eyes illuminated the room more than it had likely been in several decades. The table was littered with maps, tiny wooden horses and soldiers placed in strategic points, innocently indicating where the next atrocity was to take place.
“No,” Lura hissed. “Fucking get your own.” She grinned, her blood stained lips spread wide across her yellow fangs as she added, “Although it would certainly be fantastic to see you wearing this one. Okay, yeah, fuck it! I’ll let you try it on.”
Shade gave no response, merely staring at a candelabra in one corner of the room. Willow rose to her toes, trying to look past the tangible darkness to see just what it was that the creature was looking at. Something on the wall? Another passage, one that would get them the fuck away from this room more quickly?
The more she peered, the surer she felt that it was merely staring at nothing, and had been for nearly a minute.
“Shade?” Lura’s voice was filled with spiteful annoyance, although she repeated “Shade?” in a much softer tone, as if the demon were worried about her master. As quick as a hare she lifted one of the Vicar’s toy soldiers and tossed it at the shadow, where it simply passed through its head and evaporated immediately.
“What’s it doing?” Mongrel whispered. The pair looked at Lura as if she held any answer.
“How in the gods’ fuck am I supposed to know? Shade!” Lura eyed the doorway nervously while stiffly flexing her ebony hand. They needed to pass through the shadow in order to leave the room, and if Lura’s words were true that was something that would likely kill even her.
Just when Lura seemed to be contemplating climbing out a window, the creature’s eyes swiveled toward them, regarding them as intently as a child staring at a meal they would rather not eat.
“Shade?” Lura sounded absolutely terrified now, which only served to cause the others even more distress.
“It is done?” the shadow finally asked.
Lura sighed, though something about the question itself still seemed to bother her greatly. She pointed with a taloned finger towards the wet remains of the Vicar’s skull before adding, “Seems done to me.”
The room dimmed slowly, Shade’s eyes glowing less brightly as it seemed to focus on the still-warm corpse. “It is not done.”
As if to disagree with the apparition’s words, the body of the Vicar slid off of its chair onto the crimson floor.
“Are you proposing the Vicar is in fact not deceased? Is he going to stand up and--”
“‘Vicar’ is a title,” the shadow interrupted. It seemed to have finally noticed it was indeed standing in the same room as its servants. “There will be another. That is your next task.”
Lura spread her arms, inadvertently flinging sanguine drips from her fingertips. “The next task is to kill the replacement? What about the replacement’s replacement? Are we supposed to stick around forever until the whole church is gone or …?”
“No,” it answered. “Killing the next will suffice. They will be thrown into disarray and may even see fit to flee the city and its …” It turned towards Willow for a moment. She tried to force every thought from her mind, but still felt as if Shade had learned something she did not want it to know. “... treasures.” It said the last word with curiosity. If it had discerned their plan then the trio probably had another three seconds in which to live.
“Okay, so do we stick around for the next one? Take him out now or later?” Lura was almost hopping, not from the gleeful expectation of causing more carnage, but out of simple restlessness. “Do we bugger off? Set the building on fire? What do you want us to--”
“You flee,” it answered before immediately vanishing, although its voice lingered just long enough to add, “Now.”
Lura ran to the door, peering outside, her prized hat apparently forgotten. “Let’s go.”
“What about--?”
“Let’s go right fucking now.” She stepped out of the room and motioned for them to quickly follow. “Find the magic god-killing-sword later. This is about to turn into …”
Willow heard heavy footsteps from down the hall, around the bend they were warned not to wander towards.
“Into shit. Get to the trapdoor,” Lura hissed. “I’ll kill the ones in front. Maybe keep the focus on me while you two--”
Father Dyst turned the corner, thankfully alone, almost sliding into the still open hole as he skidded to a stop. A silent question thrown in Lura’s direction was answered by a small nod. The task was finished. If Willow expected a look of gratitude to cross the young priest’s face, she would be disappointed. His eyes held only tired sadness, and Willow wondered just how close he had been with the dead old man.
He turned and called down the hallway. “The Vicar is fine, thank the true god! They must have gone the other way. Check the cardinals’ quarters.” He turned and sped away, casting a grim smile of simple recognition in the trio’s direction as he sped past the trapdoor and rounded the bend again. “Hurry, gods damn it!” Willow wasn’t certain whether he was talking to the group of assassins or the guards, though the message was no less relevant in either case.
Lura smiled. “That man is going to find an entirely new ‘true god’ in his bedchamber this evening. Come on!” They raced out of the chamber, down the dimly-lit hallway towards their escape.
An escape they were denied as the shadows of dozens of approaching guards slid past the stone walls like ghosts. The ruse had failed. They must be sprinting past Dyst directly towards them.
“Fuck,” Lura hissed. “Down the hatch, now.”
She sped ahead of the others, leaping onto the wall and kicking off of it to propel herself around the bend. The other two could see only her shadow landing atop the nearest guard, her teeth tearing into his neck. Until now there was the possibility that they could escape relatively unnoticed. But now that they had seen Lura’s face …
“Let’s go.” Willow was whispering for some reason, though there was no way the guards had heard them over the gurgling death wail of their compatriot. She dropped to her knees, preparing to sling her feet over the door into the darkness below.
“We can’t just leave her!” Mongrel seemed like she wasn’t quite sure of her own words.
“The fuck we can’t!” She peered into the darkness as her foot touched the first rung. “M, let’s--” When she cast a glance back at her partner she was already gone, an angel leaping into the fray to come to the aid of a demon. “Oh for fuck’s balls.”
Willow scrambled out of and away from the trapdoor, fumbling at her belt to unsheathe her silver sword. What was she going to do against dozens of guards that wasn’t already being handled by two gahreer? But she could no more leave Mongrel behind than her own heart.
She rounded the bend and found what she would’ve expected. Mongrel was almost fully transformed, her teeth tearing past chainmail like a row of daggers, though not enough to pierce anything vital. She was swiping her growing paws at the guards, though she seemed always careful to hit them with the thick pads developing on her palms. They may have just killed the most powerful man on the continent, but she still didn’t want to harm his holy guard any more than she had to.
Lura had no such misgivings. A snapped neck here, a torn trachea there. Rip, bite, slash, chew. She had barely transformed. There were patches of fur on her arms and legs, stained dark from the blood of the men whose lives she was ending. Longer claws, perhaps, stretched feet, pointed ears. But she was killing in that casual, cruel way she almost always exuded. Willow remembered the one time she had actually seen her angry and feral, descending like a comet upon the witch’s hut.
“We need them alive! Alive!” Dyst was being pushed back by the onrushing crowd, who were in disarray. Some were battling the monsters, some stepping over the bodies of their slain comrades, and a few pushing the priest away from the carnage. He cast a worried look at Willow as he noticed them, likely unsure how long he would be able to keep up his role in the charade. “We need to question them! We need them alive, gods damn it!”
The demoness cast a glance behind her in Willow’s direction. “What do you plan to do with that sword, little sister? Scratch my back? Stay out of the way and let the adults …” Her face turned from a sadistic sneer to concern as she looked past Willow. “Of course. Why wouldn’t they be there, too?”
Willow looked behind her just in time to see the first spearhead peek above the trapdoor. They had followed them? Perhaps a guard had noticed the passage had been uncovered back in the tunnel, though she was sure Mongrel had pulled the planks back over the entrance. Hadn’t she?
With nowhere else to go, Willow backed up into the fray, swinging her sword across the chest of an oncoming guard as he stepped a bit too close. This caused him to stumble backwards enough that he stepped right into Lura’s open palm as she casually slammed him into the wall, his helm doing little to protect his neck from shattering like dried kindling.
Mongrel, now fully transformed, was physically tossing the foes she encountered down the hallway, desperate to keep them away from the madwoman. “Please stop,” she whispered to the older Gahreer.
Lura simply ignored her as her maw lengthened slightly, just enough to snap a few fingers off of an oncoming soldier.
Willow looked this way and that. Behind her were reinforcements, and in front of her were dozens more of them. Already several had made it out of the hole and into the hallway. Willow stepped away, pressing herself into the back of the woman she loathed in an effort to get away from the advancing reinforcements. She was no stranger to fighting, but against this many trained soldiers she was almost useless.
“Move!” The madwoman seemed to agree with Willow’s assessment of her abilities as she roughly shoved her against the wall. Willow knocked an oncoming spear aside, though another slipped past her and sliced Lura’s lengthening ear. “Ow. You are just begging for it now, aren’t you, little man? Get BACK, Tree-Cunt, I’m working here.” She slammed the offending spearman against the wall, tearing the platemail off of his chest like a lover intent on sating her lust.
A growl and a whine brought Willow’s attention to her mate, who was losing the battle in maintaining her moral stance. Already blood was dripping from her claws. Dyst was nowhere to be seen now, though Willow thought she heard his voice behind a door. She didn’t want to imagine what fate lay in store for him when they discovered he had helped them kill their living prophet. Mongrel cast a quick glance over her shoulder, surprised to find Willow standing so close by. “Willow, stay back, stay--”
She heard the click of tiny pieces of metal on metal as she followed Mongrel’s terrified gaze behind her. The men who had ascended the ladder hadn’t just been carrying spears. Three crossbows were now leveled at Willow, who out of the trio was currently the easiest target. A roar of fury and terror came from Mongrel; as fast as she was, she was not faster than a finger pulling a trigger.
Three snaps followed, like a trio of mousetraps being sprung. The bolts flew towards her. Somehow she had time to close her eyes. It was a bad way to die, but nothing less than she deserved for getting them caught up in this insane endeavor. She didn’t even feel the pain as she heard the sound of the bolts piercing flesh, muscle, and bone.
But none of it was hers.
Willow's eyes shot open again, only to find the demon--Lura, her name is Lura--standing in front of her. Two bolts had pierced her collar and shoulder, while the third was embedded in her forearm.
“Ow.” Despite the casual tone, Willow could tell that the bolts had hurt far more than Lura wanted to let on. Their eyes met for just a moment, though Willow didn’t have to try to decipher her thoughts before she felt herself being lifted off of the stone floor by a strong, furry arm and cradled into Mongrel’s bosom. Mongrel barreled into the three crossbowmen, knocking them aside while suffering a few scrapes and slashes before using her momentum to slip past the crowd back towards the Vicar’s chambers. She slid to a halt, looking back at Lura, a silent question on her black lips.
The question was received nonetheless, and soon answered. “Run, you fucking sow!”
Mongrel hesitated a moment longer before she leapt through the stained glass window depicting some long-forgotten nameless saint. Curled against her mate’s mismatched furry chest, Willow continued to watch the back of Lura’s head as she turned around to slash and maim and ruin. The smaller Gahreer cradled Willow as she lept, landing atop a steepled roof before sliding down the shingles to a lower height. One single word dominated Willow’s thoughts, driving all others from it like a viper scattering a nest of rats.
Why?
Jacobi ran a wet cloth soaked in water and alcohol across Mongrel’s wound. The she-wolf whined as she continued to shrink into her more human form. “Hush,” he ordered, which earned him a low growl of warning. “Hush that, too. You get to be the brave warrior outside, but you’re in my house--the true god’s house--and you’ll do as I say. And I say: hush.”
“Doesn’t … work like that.” Her jaw snapped as her muzzle shrunk back into place, her still-too-large tongue wetting her lips as she tested her voice. It was a strange sight, the tiny bishop fussing over a massive wolf monster. “We heal fast. You’re just rubbing … whatever that is into my skin. There’s not any wound there any--OW!”
The old priest patted her other arm affectionately, like an old man tending his granddaughter’s scrapes and bruises. “Really? What’s this then, child?” He tapped her shoulder in order to draw attention to a still-bleeding spot.
The she-wolf was surprised at the wound, even as her limbs shrank, her multiple pairs of breasts receded, her tail slipped back into her body. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t it have healed by now? Unless they … Oh. Oh, no.”
Jacobi nodded. “I’d wondered if the old tales were true. About only silver being able to kill the …” He paused.
“The monsters,” Mongrel finished for him.
“The young women who won’t stop fidgeting like children while being tended to by old men who have a hard enough time keeping their hands from shaking as it is. Be still!”
Mongrel held as still as she could as the old man ministered to her shoulder, though the effort was more for his benefit than hers. Yes, silver wounds took longer to heal, but she was still in no real danger, especially from infection. Now back in her more or less human form, she suddenly became aware of her nudity and wrapped an arm around her breasts and between her legs.
Jacobi laughed. “Child, there’s no need for you to be embarrassed in front of an old man who has seen it all before.” Despite his words he passed her a blanket from a mat he had set aside for the three to sleep on should they return. Mongrel took it with a thankful smile, though the old man wouldn’t let her cover her shoulder until he was satisfied he had cleaned the wound as well as he could have. He started to say something else, but the words came out as a sob. The sound seemed to surprise the old priest as much as it did the she-wolf.
“Bishop?” Mongrel looked at him with her gold-flecked eyes.
“It had to be done. Didn’t it?” He dropped the rag he had been using to administer to her, his hands folding and unfolding as if he were attempting to catch something that had slipped from his fingers. “It had to be done,” he said again, not a question this time but certainly not a sure statement.
“I think so, sir.” She placed a clawed hand on his, though she started to retract it for fear of him noticing just how inhuman it was. The bishop took her hand in his before she could pull it away, taking no notice of the hair, the claws, the soft pads on her fingertips. If he was bothered by her decidedly less than holy appearance, he gave no sign.
“It had to be done,” he repeated again. “May the gods have mercy on our souls.” He smiled. “And while your soul needs it much less than mine, I hope they grant you more than your share.” She felt a sudden need to lay her head on the old man’s shoulder, though she didn’t place the full weight upon him when she felt how bony his shoulder felt.
“You’re worried about the other priests finding out?”
“Yes,” Jacobi answered slowly. “Though not for my sake. An old man’s life is a fair trade for keeping atrocities like the ones this city has seen from ever occurring again. And I don’t worry about the children, not really. They’re blameless in this, and even the worst among the clergy wouldn’t pass judgment upon them.”
“Father Dyst?”
He laughed. “No, no, he’ll be fine. He always seems to find a way out. Always has.”
“What then?”
He was silent for a moment longer. “This old church. We … did some good here. No, we did quite a lot of good here. I had hoped the orphanage would’ve continued to grow. I wanted to add a dormitory nearby along the western wall. Somewhere the children could sleep in as much safety as a world such as this can promise them. I don’t have many years left, and I had hoped that when I finally joined my father and mother in the better world beyond that it would’ve been in the knowledge that the place would continue to grow. I’d … hoped they would be proud of me for that.” He patted her head softly. “But a life lived well and quiet is seldom afforded during times such as these.”
Mongrel spoke slowly. “I was one too, you know. An orphan.”
“Were you?” He seemed surprised, though not as much as Mongrel as he added, “Fate has been kind to you, then.”
She lifted her head. “Kind?”
“Oh, yes! Yes, of course.”
“But fate, the true god, whatever, it … gave me parents that never cared enough to keep me. Made me an orphan. Made me … this.” Mongrel held her hands aloft to draw attention to them. “It made me an animal. A freak.”
“It gave you a hard life in order to make you the person you needed to be,” he answered slowly. “It made you into one of the kindest souls this gods-forsaken world could ever hope to produce. It made you brave, fearless. And what it has given you, you will give back to the world a dozen times over. You have gifts that can do more good than I could ever do in a dozen lifetimes.”
“By doing what?” she asked. “Killing? Maiming? Just another tool for …” She almost said its name, but held back. “... for Lura?”
“We all have our part to play. I’m afraid mine is nearly over.” He gave a soft laugh. “No, I’m not afraid--I’m very much happy that it is. But your part is still ongoing, your burdens still placed upon you. And I have no doubt that you will conquer them, for the betterment of us all. You and the woman you love.”
Mongrel had trouble meeting his eyes, though she wasn’t sure why.
“Lean on her,” he added softly. “You’ll need her in the days to come. You’ll need both of them, but her especially. Though not, I suspect, a fraction of how much she will need you. A day is coming, very soon, when she will have to make a choice … and I fear it is one you will not like. But you must stand by her and honor her decision, whatever it may be.”
She lay her head on the old man’s lap, though it was more to hide her tears. “I know,” she whispered as she tugged on the hair on the back of her arms, as if she could make it all go away. The fangs, the claws, the fur. The ugliness”
“And they were fools,” he added, almost as a side comment.
“Who?”
“Your parents. Anyone who wouldn’t treasure a daughter such as you doesn’t deserve her.”
Into the quiet moment came the voice Mongrel knew she would hear eventually, though she looked forward to it as much as she dreaded hearing it.
“Careful, doggie.” Lura stumbled into the room. Mongrel had never seen her this wounded. Her shirt and pants were soaked with blood, sweat, and dirt, and she was still bleeding from where the three bolts had pierced her. “Who knows where that crotch has been.”
Mongrel leapt off of the pew and into a crouch, allowing Jacobi to slowly rise to his feet, though he gave a pained groan as he did.
“Sit down, child, sit down! Let me take a look at those--”
“Touch me and I’ll tear your jaw off like I did the other old fuck.” Lura wiped a string of bloody drool from her lips. Mongrel couldn’t decide if she was being rude out of disdain or habit. “Gods below, what in the nine hells is that smell? Please tell me you haven’t been hiding whiskey from me all this time, Daddy. Wait …” She gave another sniff before turning to Mongrel. “You let him rub that shit into your open wounds?! Let me see your arm. Surprised it hasn’t rotten off already.”
The she-wolf sighed. “He was helping--”
“He was lying,” she interrupted with a bark. “He’s a priest, it’s what they do.”
“He’s not a liar, Lura.”
“Of course I am,” Jacobi interrupted. This seemed to surprise both of them, though Jacobi only offered a warm smile to Mongrel. “You’re old enough to know that by now. Every priest is a liar.”
“See?” Lura grumbled, more than a little surprised at the admission. “He even says as--”
“Just as every poet is a liar. Every artist, every author, every songwriter. All of them are liars.” He placed his vial and rag back into the box he had pulled them from. “Anyone who tells you they have all the answers is a liar. An artist captures a lie in minute detail, and it seems so real. But it isn’t, not really. A writer invents their own world, with happy endings and villains punished and love without end. Life rarely is kind enough to grant us even one of these gifts. But sometimes that’s exactly what people need to hear, to see, to feel. Sometimes a lie is enough to keep them going: a sermon, a story, a song. Sometimes we lie so we can keep placing one foot in front of the other.”
The small church fell silent. Lura gave a small nod and a barely perceptible smile before a look of worry crossed her face. “Dyst was …”
Jacobi almost fell onto the pew, though Mongrel leapt on top of it and helped him to his seat. “He’s gone then.”
“No.” She shook her head and sighed. “At least, I don’t think so. I couldn’t get to him in time, but it sounded like he was being dragged away. It was hard to tell with all the shouting. After the two of you left, it got much worse. There were more and more and more of them. They just kept coming and coming and … I … am sorry.” She grimaced, as if the words tasted foul on her tongue. “I don’t say that very often, and when I do I usually don’t mean it truthfully. But this time I do. I wanted to save him, but my being there was only going to make it worse for him.” She rubbed the back of her head, seemingly heedless of the blood underneath her long nails. “Where’s the cunt?”
“Asleep.” Mongrel didn’t even register the insult anymore; when Lura was speaking it was just another word. “She was pretty shaken up after today. We’ve been through a lot, but I guess it got to her.”
“She’ll be fine,” Lura offered with a yawn. “The real concern now is whatever insane nonsense this one is about to do.” She nodded towards Jacobi.
He was silent for a moment, though he must have felt the eyes of two werewolves gazing at him anticipatorily. In his eyes was a look as full of conviction as it was weariness. “They’ll take him for questioning.”
“The kind that uses hot tongs and pliers?”
He nodded. “I’m going to have a talk with Father Tomure. We were swore our priestly vows on the same day, and he’s always been a friend. He’ll at least be able to get me in to talk with Father Dyst. Then I can explain that he wasn’t involved.”
“Which of course he was.” Lura gave a longer yawn. She seemed as tired as the old man, in ways no one under eighty could ever hope to understand. “This is a stupid idea. But you already know that.”
Jacobi gave a smile. “Of course I do, dear girl. Most of my ideas are. But I’m still going to do it.”
“Bishop,” Mongrel said softly, placing her clawed hands on the hem of his vestments. “There are other ways, better ways of doing this. We have to go back. We’re looking for … something. When we do, we’ll help him.”
He placed a wrinkled hand on the back of her head. “Mong--” He paused, as if to correct himself. Despite it being her name, he still felt it was an insult. “Dear girl, when you are as old as I am--and the true god will see to it that you are one day--you begin to look back. On happier times. On memories of friends that have been called to the god’s embrace. But mostly on what you’ve done. The bad, yes, but more often than not the good. And there hasn’t been near enough of that. I’ve said a few verses, swept a few floors, fed a few scraps of moldy bread to children. Not enough. Not enough at all.”
Mongrel looked to Lura as if the madwoman held any answers. When their eyes met, she simply shook her head.
“Besides, my hands have been involved in this whole affair, but thus far I haven’t gotten any blood underneath my nails. Mine shouldn’t be the only ones not stained.” He sighed, steeling himself for what he was about to say, though it was only a simple, “I need to do this.”
“I’m going, too.”
The three of them turned, watching as the fiery-haired lad stepped from the shadows. Pit had a look of determination in his emerald eyes that one would find in every soldiers’ that ever gave his life for a pointless cause, every martyr who couldn’t wait to be offered up as a sacrifice to his silly god.
“Absolutely not.” The bishop’s words were firm, though almost appreciative. “With Father Dyst gone, I need someone to look after the others.” He smiled. “But only until I get back.”
If you get back, Mongrel thought.
“But I want to help,” Pit objected.
“You can,” the bishop answered. “In ways neither of us can hope to guess. The true god has a plan for you, one I suspect to be of greater importance than following a tired old fool to … to whatever is to come.”
A sullen look came over the boy’s face. Fourteen winters, and already ready to give his life for a cause he couldn’t hope to understand.
“Promise me,” the bishop said sternly. “Promise me you will stay here and look after the children.”
He couldn’t meet the bishop’s eyes. “Promise me you’ll come back.”
“You have my word on that,” the old man lied.
“Then you have mine, too.”
Mongrel doubted anyone in the room believed him.
“Good,” the bishop answered. “Now get to bed. You’ve a job to do tomorrow and I’ve one to do now.” With that he shuffled away, picked up his walking stick in the corner of the dusty old church, and walked into the dark night, humming the tune to the same hymn he’d sung with the children earlier.
Lura sighed. “I’m gonna piss, find something to eat, and sleep a few hours. We’ll talk tomorrow about our own stupid little suicide mission.”
Before she could, Mongrel called out to her. “Lura, how many … Um, how many of them did you …?”
“All of them,” she answered swiftly, a sharp tone to her voice. “Did you expect otherwise? I killed every single one of them. One couldn’t have been much older than the red-haired little shit. I killed them all. Is that what you needed to hear? I killed them. That’s what monsters do.”
“You aren’t a monster.” Mongrel hoped the words didn’t seem as empty as she felt. “You … don’t have to be.”
The giant started to reply, but simply stepped outside into the courtyard.
There was a stillness to the area, a reverence greater than any that one would hope to find in the church itself. The few trees in the yard seemed hesitant to sway, as if they knew what was coming, more than any of the others. For a moment, Lura expected to see Shade standing in the corner, and in truth she would’ve almost welcomed its appearance. She needed something to yell at.
From behind one of those leafless sentinels stepped a woman of 28 winters, though she doubted she would see one more. Willow held her hands up as if to show she wasn’t carrying a dagger. It was a useless gesture, but one she felt she ought to make.
Lura stared at her without saying anything. The way that she had stepped in front of the crossbow bolts, it seemed automatic, like it was just another part of the battle. Like she had done it before, as if she wouldn’t think of not doing it.
Finally she asked a simple, “Are you okay?”
Willow nodded. Not for the first time, she wondered if there wasn’t a change going on with Lura. “The Tree-Cunt could be hurt,” she had said in the tunnel. And then to protect her? To save her? Was this just an act of simple camaraderie, just helping out the people she interacted with every day? Was it a Gahreer thing, some kind of pack animal mentality that Lura once spoke of, almost as if she were incapable of not helping someone in her “family.” Willow thought back to the day they had ambushed her as she lay sleeping off a night of drinking. Her jaw hanging lopsided from her face. Her claws digging into her eyes to try to remove the Sparrow’s powder. The screams as she lay buried under flaming rubble. This was the same person. Wasn’t she?
She cleared her throat, and tried to say something. “Thank you?” “Goodnight?” “Burn in a thousand hells?” She couldn’t decide which, and so she simply nodded again.
Lura almost seemed to smile, as if she recognized what Willow was trying to say even if Willow herself didn’t. “Get some sleep. Apparently we need to do this all over again tomorrow.”
Dawn found the three women sitting in the empty pews, as tired as they had been before they turned in for the night. Lura hadn’t bothered washing the blood off of her shirt, but Willow supposed she would just wait until the opportunity came to steal another one. It wasn’t an entirely bad idea.
Lura placed her bare feet on the armrest as she picked a piece of stray bread from her teeth. “Okay. Let’s kill another prophet, shall we? No conspiracies this time, it’s just the three of us so we do things our way.”
Not “my way,” Willow thought. Not Lura’s way. “Our” way.
“I don’t want to …” Mongrel cleared her throat and tried to put more conviction into her voice. It was an action Willow had noticed she often used before dealing with the monster. “I don’t want to get into a position like yesterday. I don’t want to fight any more guards than we have to.”
“Good, because you aren’t fighting any of them,” Lura answered. “You’re better at slinking around than I am, so the two of you will find our magic orb or sword or wand or whatever. I’ll draw their attention, keep them away from you two while you find a way to … you know. It would be better for me to look for it. I have more experience dealing with magical nonsense. But you’ll be able to find it easy enough, and I don’t want you to get your paws any bloodier than they have to be.” The partners shared a quick look at each other. “There’s bound to be a lot of artifacts in the treasury, and the guards will be rushing towards me. We can’t be sure they’ll be expecting another assassination so soon after the first, but after the damage I did yesterday there should be more guards surrounding the new Vicar and fewer in the less important areas. Especially when I turn into a big snarly monster and--oh!” She giggled madly. “What’s the god they don’t like again? The god-below? I’ll say I’m his emissary or something. ‘I’ve come to drag you all to the hells, blah blah blah.’ That’ll give me something fun to do when I’m …” She dropped the thought as she glanced at Mongrel.
“And the Vicar?” asked the half-wolf.
“Once you think you’ve found … whatever it is, you can scurry away out a window like you did yesterday. I’ll sense when you’ve left the area, and that’ll be the sign to find him and finish him off. So the longer you keep me waiting, the more time I have to practice my lack of ethics on the poor innocent zealots.” She gave another cruel grin, though it wasn’t as menacing these days. Willow wasn’t sure if that was because she was just getting used to it or if Lura’s heart just wasn’t in it. “Make sure you’re out before noon. Remember, I’m not as picky about who I have for lunch as the two of you.”
“How will you even know who to go after?” Willow asked earnestly. “We don’t know who the new Vicar even is.”
“I’ll know becaaaaause …” Lura pointed to Mongrel like a teacher calling upon a student.
The half-wolf looked confused for a moment, though it likely had more to do with being called on like a child than the answer to Lura’s ramblings. “The … incense?”
“Good girl! Whoever the new boss is, he would’ve gone into that room more than anyone else. So I go after whoever smells the most of shit and incense. Also, there’s a certain special scent the humans give off when they’re put in a position of authority. Kind of a smell of confidence, bravery, competence. Traveling around with Tree-Cunt it’s no wonder you’ve never smelled it.” She stuck her tongue out at the human woman.
“As opposed to you,” Willow countered. “The woman who smells like rotten meat and whiskey vomit.” She tried to tell herself she wasn’t joking along, that this wasn’t a playful jab at a friend. Why in all the hells was she doing this? She was still the enemy, and Willow would still find a way to destroy her. Somehow.
“She’s right,” offered Pit. The young boy had joined their plotting from the very first moment it began. Lura growled at him, but Willow said they’d likely have an easier time extracting the dust from the air than shooing the lad away. “It’s bad. Like, you should maybe get it checked out. By a healer. Or an exorcist. Plenty of those around.” He brightened up for the first time since Jacobi had left the church. “Hey! I know someone! He’s--”
“Really having a hard time remembering why I haven’t skinned you yet,” Lura muttered. This earned her a glare of warning from Willow.
“Okay, that’s all fine,” Mongrel said with surprising forcefulness, trying to drag the conversation back to the actions to come. “But how do we get in? They know the passage we used. We can’t exactly walk through the front door like Dyst did. Reasonably sure if we crawl back up the way I escaped we’ll have crossbows firing at us. Again.” For some reason she glanced at Willow but didn’t seem to want to meet her eyes.
Lura shrugged. “Well, we’ve got five minutes to think of a way. I’m not entirely opposed to storming the gates. They don’t have a drawbridge or a portcullis. It’s a magistrate’s office, not a castle. Also wouldn’t be the first time I’ve strolled through the front door of a well guarded building.” Her brow furrowed. “Won’t even be the first time I’ve strolled through the front door of THIS building.”
“Yes, but unlike you we actually care about the lives of our two captives,” Mongrel hissed. “We go dashing through the front door they could end up hurting Dyst and Jacobi.” At a worried look from Pit, she swiftly added, “Assuming Jacobi hasn’t already gotten him out of there. We can’t be spotted again. I don’t want Willow anywhere near the scary end of a crossbow.”
The monster sighed, then added simply, “Two minutes left.”
“I know someone!” Pit jumped in, as eager in discussing a rescue-murder as he would probably be arranging a game of tag.
“I don’t need a gods-damned exorcist,” the madwoman groaned. “I don’t smell that bad. Can you please get this hairless rat out of my sight?”
“Not the fucking exorcist,” the boy sneered. “Yosha. She’s the older sister of one of the girls here. She works as a maid in the kitchens. Keeps an ear out for anything Dyst may find interesting in exchange. She could sneak us in!”
Willow shook her head. “Too risky. I doubt she’s going to work against the people paying her.”
“She doesn’t care, as long as she’s paid,” he countered. “One Vicar’s coin is as good as another. And she’s not even a believer anyway.”
“The kitchens would be connected to everywhere,” Lura mused. “All the passages for the servants will connect there like a hub. One will take us to the hallway leading into the new target’s chambers. Maybe into the chamber itself.”
At the word “target,” Willow’s heart sank. Not because of what the word meant, but in how easily the word now slipped into Willow’s world. Just another target. Just another job. Not a person, just prey.
Mongrel shook her head, her long dark tresses swaying in the dusty air. “No. It’ll get her in trouble, and I don’t--” She glanced at her mate. “We don’t want that.”
“She’ll be doing her rounds,” Pit offered. “Cleaning, bringing water to the guards. All she’d have to do is ‘accidentally’ leave a window open or something.” He smiled, filled with the eagerness of a child happy to be included in a conspiracy. “There’s so much going on with the Day approaching that they won’t be paying attention to one serving-girl.”
“I’ll smell her as soon as she leaves.” Lura nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, this will work.” She looked expectantly at Mongrel. “Doggie?”
Mongrel sighed. “Fine. And once we’re in the servant’s hallways, we split up?”
“We find a magic wand and you …” Willow nodded towards Lura. “You do what you do.” The monster held a smirk that silently said what Willow was already thinking. Not what I do. What we do. What was it she had said? The only thing separating you from me is sixty years.
“What the hells is this about a magic wand?” Pit quietly asked.
Lura rose to her feet, ignoring the question. “Well! As far as plans go, this is … pretty shit, actually. But I’ve done more with less. The important thing is for you two to focus on the job. Priorities, little sisters. I do the heavy lifting, you find the magic wand.” Pit cleared his throat, earning him a sigh from the elder wolf. “And, yes, we try to find the humans,” she added before muttering, “If we have time.”
“We’ll have time,” the boy almost growled. “We’ll make time.”
Lura started to respond before Mongrel cut her off. “Of course we will. We’ll get them out.” Willow nodded in agreement.
“Of course we will,” Lura muttered. “At least the one with a cock that still works.”
The journey to the kitchen was relatively uneventful. The guards seemed ever in a hurry. Today was a busy one, and even more so given the recent assassination. It was the opening ceremony of the feast preceding the Day of Want. The inaugural speech of the newly-crowned Vicar. The doubling and redoubling of all those willing to serve as the true god’s loyal protectors in this, their darkest hour. The assassination was officially acknowledged; in truth there was no hiding it. Word traveled too quickly, and the clergy would want to get ahead of any rumors in order to pacify the populace and keep the peace as best they could. Willow was only marginally surprised that it seemed no one really was apt to mourn the loss of the Vicar. He was the true god’s chief servant, his voice on earth, but man’s desire for war always seems to be tempered all too quickly after the battles were won and the acquisition of bread and water became the chief day-to-day concern. The few guards that drew close enough to give any sort of alarm soon passed by, running from one crucial task to another as the city’s bells marked the eleventh hour. The new Vicar would be giving his speech soon, though he would find he wouldn’t be able to finish it if the mad she-wolf had any say in the matter.
Lura came to a stop, leaning on a ten foot wall and turning her gaze to Pit in a silent question. The boy nodded gravely. This was the place. Lura had allowed him to accompany them, muttering that if they forbade it then he would just follow anyway. He seemed about to ask something of her before she casually leapt over the barrier, landing as quiet as death’s own footsteps on the other side. Willow and Mongrel shared a look, although it was not the one they were accustomed to. The look didn’t ask “how did we get ourselves into this?” It didn’t ask “what are we doing here,” or “should we be involved,” or “isn’t this incredibly fucking stupid?”. They were past that point now. The look merely said that the pair was tired, Mongrel’s deep brown eyes reflecting Willow’s own piercing blue.
Mongrel held her hands out for the lad, motioning for him to climb onto her back. The she-wolf mouthed a silent “him first” to her mate, which only earned her a mocking cough of indignation. Willow stuck out her tongue before she leapt, kicking off the wall to propel herself higher before her hands wrapped around the top of the wall and she easily pulled herself up. She fell a little unceremoniously next to the demon, who immediately pulled her to the ground and wrapped her filthy fingers around her mouth. Willow struggled in disgust, offended at both the touch and the insinuation that she was making too much noise. A look from the leader of their demented little party stopped her struggling. It told her everything she needed to know.
Something was wrong. They weren’t even inside the door and something was already wrong.
The half-wolf dropped to the other side of Willow, placing Pit on the ground. She sniffed the air, a look of worry crossing her feral features, although her concern was accompanied by a low grumble of her belly. Willow couldn’t blame her for that--they were entering the main kitchen of a massive manse while it was preparing for the largest feast the world had likely seen in several decades. She sighed heavily, turning to Lura, awaiting her decision on how to proceed. Willow hated placing Lura in the position of leadership even more than the madwoman probably hated being placed in it.
As one group, the quartet crawled underneath the nearest windowsill, Pit hovering just behind the others, no doubt knowing he was the least experienced in this endeavor. He had yet to experience his first assassination, whereas Willow and her mate were currently embarking on their third. They were seasoned murderers now. Old pros. Willow was so gods-damned tired.
Lura shook her head, either in disbelief, reluctance to continue the plan, or in answer to some silent question she was posing to herself. She turned back to the others, shaking her head again, and pointing back towards the wall they had just leapt over. Whatever was causing her concern, Mongrel seemed to share in it, her thick brow rising in worry as she placed a clawed hand gently on Pit’s shoulder, either to reassure him or ask for reassurance herself. Willow didn’t need the heightened senses of her companions to detect the noticeable absence of hurried bustling from within the kitchen’s walls. Lura’s chapped lips parted just in time for one of the side doors to slowly swing open, allowing a young man wearing the uniform of the pontifical guard to step from the quiet room into the small courtyard. The madwoman turned to face him, preparing to strike. She hesitated as the youth’s outstretched arm indicated he was ushering them inside.
They were expected.
“T-T-The Vicar has been awaiting your arrival,” the young man stammered, likely unused to dealing with an octogenarian gahreer assassin. “His Grace asks you to grant him the pleasure of your company, and will be available just after the opening declaration and prayers.” He gestured again, though Willow couldn’t be sure if the shaking of his hand was due to nervousness or if he were waving them inside. “I-I’ve been asked to escort you through the s-servants’ passages to His Grace’s office.”
Willow and Mongrel had risen to their feet already, preparing to sprint to the wall to make their escape, the she-wolf scooping up Pit as she started to leap into the air. Lura caught them both before they could take another step, snatching Willow by the collar of her tattered tunic and Mongrel by her long brown hair, which elicited a growl from the human and a squeak from the werewolf.
“Stay still,” Lura hissed. “We’ve got a job to do, or did you forget?”
“Are you fucking mad?” Willow whispered. “This is a--”
“Trap,” Lura interrupted. “Yes. Obviously. What was your first clue, the empty kitchen or the guard literally holding the fucking door open for us?” She turned, smiling at the guard while giving what Willow thought was her attempt at a curtsey. “His Grace is too kind, and we’ll gladly accept his invitation to tear out his squishy bits. I only wish everyone I’ve murdered was this considerate. Lead the way.”
The guard started to step inside, though he hesitated to turn his back to the madwoman. “T-This way.”
Willow glanced at Mongrel as if to confirm that there was at least one other person who hadn’t completely lost her mind. The half-wolf only shook her head slowly, evidently as confused as her partner. Lura snapped her fingers to draw the pair’s attention back to her before impatiently waving for them to follow. Willow rose to her feet and followed the source of all her torment into what was surely more misfortune.
Cheers of rapturous applause faded as they moved further from the open kitchen as they wound their way through the narrow passage of the servants’ chambers, the congregation assembled in the outside courtyard no doubt elated at the words of their newly-appointed madman. The halls were barely lit by the guard’s small lantern and the occasional torch to indicate the start of a group of steps or a sharp turn in the bend. Willow wondered how many centuries they had hidden away the common folk, necessary nuisances most wanted when they were least seen by whatever magistrate was in charge of the city at the time.
“We had a plan,” she whispered, though she needn’t attempt to remain quiet. “Logic was involved. An ordered arrangement of preceding steps that would lead us to a goal. Remember that? Remember when that happened?”
Mongrel’s only response was a grunt of noncommittal agreement as she crawled on hand and foot behind her mate, the occasional scratch of her claws on the thick red carpet reassuring Willow that she was indeed still behind them. She paused on occasion in order to make sure that Pit was still following the rest of the group. Willow wondered if he was old enough to realize the absurdity of the circumstances.
“We still have a plan,” Lura whispered back, though her voice was tinged with its usual mocking tone. “We just get to skip a few bits. I get to kill another all-knowing embodiment of the true god’s whatever and you two get to do the thing you’re supposed to do. We’re being efficient.”
“Don’t kill the guard,” Mongrel whispered in turn. “Please? He’s just doing his job.”
The young man in question cleared his throat and meekly asked, “What was that last bit?”
“She’s asking me not to kill you,” Lura calmly answered. “She does that a lot. Like every ten minutes. It’s SO very annoying.”
“Oh,” was his only reply. He was probably a full decade younger than Willow. “Do you usually, um … comply with those requests?”
“Half the time.” Lura yawned. “Maybe one time out of four. Just run away when the rest of the guards inevitably attack us. I’ll have forgotten about you by the time I start killing them. Probably.”
They followed the no-doubt unassured youth as he continued to lead them away from the servants’ passages, into an elaborate hallway, and then into the largest room that Willow had ever witnessed. The room was itself a mansion, eight times the size of the now comparatively tiny church, its walls adorned with portraits of nobility lucky enough to be born in a time before bread was as luxurious as the gems dangling from their garish clothing. More guards stood in the center of the room and along its side, and it took Willow a moment before she realized they were forming a sort of living barrier, ushering them towards a staircase that could’ve hosted three wagons being dragged along side-by-side. For all their armor and weapons, the men looked as if they were absolutely terrified, and they had every reason to be. They knew what had happened to their fellow soldiers in the true god’s army, and they knew who had been the architect of their demise. Said architect glanced about, more interested in the room’s shiny adornments than the men assigned to protect it. She started to say something snide before her face froze, turning her head slightly to the side as if she had just heard something curious.
The bitch’s eyes darted to the left and right as she sniffed the incense-laden air. The last time they had seen her this concerned there was an eldritch abomination blocking the path of escape.
“What?” Willow silently mouthed.
“Thought I smelled something familiar,” Lura whispered. “With me that’s usually not a good thing.” She shook her head and motioned for them to follow. “Sorry,” she apologized to the young guard. “Didn’t mean to interrupt whatever the fuck this is. Please lead on to whatever trap you’ve got planned.”
They were led up the staircase, Mongrel lumbering about on four legs while her gold-flecked eyes darted nervously about, trying to watch every sword and spear at once, no doubt anticipating an attack that Willow felt was certain to happen any moment now. Near her side, Pit seemed just as worried; Willow felt awful. If there were any gods in this world--other than the blind, idiot ones--then one of the many sins that Willow would need to atone for would be bringing a child into the midst of this rapidly approaching bedlam.
The stairs led to a hallway, a preordained path the group was forced into. The guards followed them like hounds herding sheep. Willow expected they would be led straight to another set of stairs, but their erstwhile guide seemed intent on having them turn several corners and she soon found herself disoriented, unable to remember from which direction they had come. All of this was deliberate, of course. The escape hatch they had used to enter on the previous day wouldn’t work this time, and it was better to have the group questioning which way they would need to take to escape.
At last they reached a second set of stairs, this one much less ornate, the faded red-and-black speckled carpet heavily trampled over the course of the years by servants of a long-dead magistrate or a recently-dead prophet. They soon found themselves in a familiar setting, the long, bare hallway they had only yesterday found themselves fighting for their lives in. Willow rubbed absently at her collar, thinking about how the woman who had murdered her parents had saved her life and hating her all the more for it.
It had already begun as they were approaching the former Vicar’s chambers. The speech. Calm words of better days soon to come, pains wiped away by the hand of an invisible god, the promise of retribution for the wrongs heaped upon the faithful. Willow had never witnessed a religious gathering of this size--or of any size in truth--but somehow she knew what to expect from whatever newly-crowned horrid soul had taken the throne of the last one. Despite the eerie march, Willow felt certain that the life’s blood of the man speaking would soon be underneath a madwoman’s fingernails as his slowly cooling body twisted and twitched on the floor. Lura’s propensity for ending life was as dependable and inevitable as the rising sun. It was what would come after that Willow wasn’t certain of.
The young man stepped aside, closing his eyes as he drew a breath, the stringy muscles of his throat dropping and rising like the tides as he swallowed before announcing, “This way. He’ll be with you as soon as the address is finished.”
Lura shrugged. “No problem. We can wait until he’s done. The chairs looked comfy.” She started to ask him something, probably whether or not they would be offered any wine, but her words broke off as the youth scurried away quickly.
The young guard’s retreat had been expected. But none of them foresaw the rest of the assembled defenders of the true god’s faith to turn on their heels and calmly walk away as well, dozens of them rounding the corner and leaving them standing on their own. They seemed entirely lacking of any sort of concern over the short distance between their new lord and the women intent on killing him.
“Huh,” Lura said simply. “That’s unexpected.”
“This is wrong,” Willow hissed. “We need to leave. Now. This isn’t right. They’re just leaving?!”
Mongrel nodded as she pulled Pit behind her as if anticipating she would soon need to protect him. “Pit, once I finish changing I want you and Willow to climb onto my back. There was a window at the top of the last staircase. That will be the quickest way out. Lura, do you think you could--”
She wasn’t there. Of course she wasn’t there. The monster opened the double doors to the new Vicar’s chambers with a childlike flourish, as if she hadn’t gotten to make so dramatic an entrance in quite some time. She looked back at them over her shoulder, her brows raised expectantly like a mother scolding her children, as if she wasn’t sure why they weren’t eagerly following her into the lion’s den.
Willow closed her eyes and shook her head. Maybe when she opened them she’d find herself in a world that made any sort of sense. She doubted it.
Lura took a seat at the table where the day before the Vicar had eaten his last meal, idly pushing a butter knife with a dirty claw as she waited on their host to finish. Willow was so intent on thinking of a way out that she hadn’t paid attention to the spectacle occurring before her. The room was almost cloudy with incense, so much so that Willow had trouble making out the form of the new Vicar, his dark silhouette obscured by the foul-smelling fog. Her poor mate sneezed; no doubt the smell was even worse for her.
The rumble of the assembled faithful’s cheers and roars was fading as the address drew to a close. The figure raised his hand and made a deliberate motion, delivering unto the faithful some sort of blessing before he gave a simple wave. Music began playing in the courtyard as those gathered eagerly began to take part in the prepared feast. Meat was in short supply, as it always was, but more than two pieces of bread would seem a banquet to the common folk below.
The tone of the Vicar’s words abruptly switched from a bishop addressing his clergy to the tone one would expect to come from a farmer raking pig shit from his stalls. “Finally,” he mumbled. “And wave, and wave, and pontificate. And thee and thou and blah and blah and … Done.”
This wasn’t a zealot addressing his followers. This was a man pretending to be a zealot addressing his followers. Willow suddenly found herself more frightened than she had when dozens of spears were leveled at her back. The new Vicar seemed as much of a believer in the true god’s faith as she herself.
“I apologize for the delay,” he spoke as he slowly turned. “Believe me when I say I’m just as disinterested in this little diatribe as you must be. One of the least enjoyable parts of the job.”
Lura sniffed, trying to fight through the haze of smoke to discern the man’s scent. Her brow furrowed in confusion. “He sounds young. And attractive. Why does he sound young and attractive?” The butter knife slid to a halt as the realization dawned on her just as it did the rest of them. “Oh. Fuck me. Fuck me, I should’ve saw this one coming.”
Dyst waved the smoke from his face before stepping close enough that they could make out his features. “The smoke is a close second,” he continued. “I always hated it. Never understood the point of it either. It smells like a horse’s fart and I’m always afraid I’ll be labeled a heretic if I cough.” He pulled out a chair at the head of the table, a different one than the room’s previous occupant had occupied. Whereas the old one was adorned with gold and gems, this one seemed like it had been recently pulled from a peasant’s quarters. It creaked as he took a seat. “Sorry for the lack of food and drink, but every crumb and drop is needed to feed the writhing unwashed masses down below.” He gestured towards Willow and her mate. “Please, sit! I know you must be tired after last night’s little adventure … my friends.” There was no malice in his last words, instead an almost hopeful curiosity, as if asking if they were indeed still comrades.
In answer, Willow started to draw her silver sword before Lura pointed to the seat next to her as if calling a hound to heel. “No,” she grumbled. “I want to hear his little ‘archvillain’s master plan’ speech. He owes me that much for making me think I wasn’t going to have to garrot him.” Willow and Mongrel slowly took a seat, their hands subconsciously slipping into the other’s as they wished for the thousandth time their lives hadn’t turned out like this. Lura smiled, her yellow fangs glistening with spit. “Please, continue!”
“I’m probably going to disappoint you,” Dyst admitted. “The ‘master plan’ hasn’t changed since yesterday when you killed my predecessor. Which I should really thank you for, by the way. In addition to removing the ruse you also removed the smell. He had a nasty odor about him, don’t you think? As many times as we bathed the old fool, he always smelled like he had just shat himself. Usually because he had just shat himself.”
“The plan … hasn’t changed?” Mongrel seemed particularly sad. She really had counted Dyst as a friend. They both had. But then again they were both fools; life proved that more and more each day. “You’re not going to do anything differently?”
Dyst couldn’t even deign to fake a remorseful smile. “Not at all. If anything, the great work of our faith will start up again even faster now. Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because you’re better than …” Mongrel sighed. “You’re supposed to be better than the last one.” She was still doing it. She was still hoping that the world was going to work out as she wanted it to, that there would be some reason for all the suffering and the misery and the death. “Aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “The wars will continue as planned because the one orchestrating will still be doing that. You didn’t really think that the old man was capable of being anything more than a figurehead, did you? A symbol for the sheep down below to follow? He couldn’t plan his next bowel movements, let alone the world I’m going to bring about.”
Lura sighed. “Here it goes.”
“Do you know that there’s a passage in our scripture?” he continued. “One about feeding the faithful? It’s surrounded by justifications of genocide of course, and absolutely endless ‘miracles’ that aren’t even very impressive these days. But that one command in particular always stood out to me more than all of the rest of the nonsense. ‘Feeding the faithful.’ As if any god that would offer food as a reward for obedience were worth worshipping. An omnipotent god, one who for some reason can’t seem to defeat the evil one that he himself created in the first place. The entirety of our existence would boil down to a master’s bargain with his dog. ‘Sit and be a good boy and you’ll get a treat.’ Follow him and there will be food; don’t and you’ll starve. Such a monstrous being. Anyone who would follow him would be a fool.” He nodded back towards the pulpit he had recently occupied. “And there is no shortage of those.” He smiled. “If I have an ‘archvillain’s master plan’ it’s this: Where he won’t feed them, we will. And not just Ronae. All of them.”
Lura waved at Mongrel to get her attention. “You see? This is why you always kill the priest-types. Before they can start talking. They say what you want to hear just before they say what you’re horrified to hear. Always, always kill them. You’ve got to get rid of that hope and reason silliness and just kill them and be done with it. Big sis always knows best.”
“You’re going to feed the others?” Willow interrupted. “The ones that believe in different fairy tales than you do?”
“I don’t believe in any of them,” Dyst clarified. “I thought we covered that bit already.”
“The streets are lined with the corpses of the people you’re promising to feed one day. The crosses. The pyres.”
“Unfortunate but necessary.” He gave a sad smile. Even if he didn’t believe the fairy tales he seemed to genuinely believe this. “In one thing, the true god and I agree: They have to be converted to our fairy tale first, as awful as that is to even say. And most aren’t going to do that. To feed them they have to sit down at my table. To do that they’ll have to sit down next to my followers. And do you think they’ll accept them if they aren’t of the same faith? They just barely keep from killing each other even when they do believe the same nonsense.”
Lura’s butterknife was suddenly tossed into the air in frustration, clattering on the large table as she placed her head in her hands. “I was going to fuck you. I was actually going to fuck you. And now this? What in the fuck is wrong with me lately?”
“You’re going to kill them until you can feed them,” Mongrel whispered mournfully. “All those lives ended because you think the world will be a better place once you’re running it.”
“And you’re following an assassin who has killed more people in her life than I ever will.” He smiled. “Well … personally, at least. And, no, it won’t be me sitting like a demon, cackling from a throne perched atop the skulls of thousands of starving children. Nothing as silly as all that. This isn’t the work of one lifetime, it’s the work of several. Of dozens. But it’s underway, and it has been for decades now. In times of war, the commoners will sell the gods of their fathers for a loaf of bread if it means feeding their children. Now imagine what they’ll do for meat and wine. Yes, we will bring war to the doorstep of every home across the continent, then across the world. But when we’re through, they’ll follow whatever gods we tell them to, and the war that we have begun will be the last one the world will ever have to witness.”
“She was right.” Willow shut her eyes. “I fucking hate her so much, and she was right. She was right and you’re a madman.”
Dyst chuckled. “Tell that to the hungry souls down below. The ones who become less hungry with every passing moment.”
“Wait, nobody caught on to your helping us?” Lura was trying to balance the butter knife on one finger now and doing a passable job at it. “There were dozens last night that heard you screaming, ‘Don’t kill them’ and ‘No, not that way, they’re over here.’ What about those?”
“They won’t be saying anything,” he answered plainly. “You killed them all. Remember?”
“Oh. Right.”
“Why involved us at all,” Willow asked.
“The faithful have just learned about a host of monsters--of demons--having murdered the true god’s chief servant,” Dyst calmly answered. “What better way to unite them against the evils arraigned against them more and more each day. ‘Truly we are living in the end times, my brothers and sisters. Please dedicate your entirety to our great work.’ As I said, you have done me a greater favor than I could have ever anticipated before I ran into you in that ruined little shack.”
Lura raised a finger as if trying to draw the attention of a teacher. “Why couldn’t I smell it when you were lying? Something about the incense?”
“Because I never did.”
“Hmm.” Lura spit on the floor before wiping her chin with a nearby napkin. “This one wasn’t bad. As far as evil mastermind monologues go, this one wasn’t that bad. I’ve heard better, but I’ve heard much worse. Now, if you’re finished, we can get to the next bit. I think I’ll start with tearing your cock off. Seems the most appropriate.” She slumped in her seat, crossing her arms and pouting like a child. “Can’t believe I was going to fuck you.”
“A generous proposal, and one that I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find the idea strangely enticing.” The Vicar leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “Now, as to what to do with the three of you.”
“Oh, wait wait wait, this will be good.” Lura seemed slightly more interested.
“I want you to know that I debated this for a long time.” The sad smile appeared again and Willow hated that it seemed an honest one. “I stayed up late last night trying to come up with a way in which I could let the two of you go. You’ll understand--and no doubt agree--that the world will be better off without this creature roaming free in it.” He motioned to Lura without looking at her, apparently dismissing her from the discussion. “But I feel like executing the two of you just doesn’t seem entirely right. I owe you quite a great deal for getting rid of the old man. I contemplated offering you a place in the faithful, not that I believe you are stupid enough to honestly join it. And having an immortal, nigh unkillable monster in the employ of the church would be a tremendous asset. Speaking of Lady Mongrel, not …” Dyst’s eyes fluttered for a moment before he looked again at Lura, who only returned an innocent grin. “That’s … strange. I never seem to be able to remember your name.”
“Good,” Lura pouted.
“Regardless, I just can’t envision waking up tomorrow morning without a set of fangs sunk into my throat. Or the next day, or the next. The likelihood that you’ll end my life steadily increases the longer I leave you alive, so I just can’t foresee a scenario in which that is possible.” He looked away for a moment. “Perhaps a smarter man than I could think of a way to convince you to join us, but I am not that man. You won’t believe me, but I really am sorry.”
The monster seated to Willow’s right started to rise. “Do you know … I’ve never castrated anyone with a butter knife before. I mean, I’ve always wanted to but the opportunity never came about. Believe me when I say this will be as much an experience for me as for you.”
“I agree,” he added as he gave a slight flick of his wrist in Mongrel’s direction.
A sudden clang of metal on metal to Willow’s left echoed off of the stone walls like a hunter’s trap snapping shut. Before Willow could reach her feet, Mongrel’s chair was on the ground as the woman Willow loved writhed in agony, a silver collar clasped around her neck like the adornment of a noble’s pampered pet. A look of anguish was etched across the she-wolf’s features, her fangs gnashing as she tried desperately to force her fingers beneath the collar wrapped around her neck. Willow could make out row upon row of jagged silver thorns inlaid in the center of the device, piercing Mongrel’s flesh as she called out her only love’s name through the blood spilling from her mouth. The nightmarish collar held her pinned to the ground by a long pole, held aloft by the trembling hands of a fourteen year old boy.
“I had to!” Pit had tears in his eyes as he tightened his grip on the device causing Mongrel to writhe in torment. “I’m sorry! He’s taking the rest of the kids here today. A-And he told me if I didn’t, he-he’d … I’m sorry!”
“You fucking little bastard! I’ll kill you, you fucking little--” Willow’s curse was interrupted by the chamber doors flinging open, a horde of the Vicar’s armored faithful sprinting into the room enveloped in a thick fog. Several took the rod from Pit’s hands, and Mongrel’s pained mewls became even more pitiful as they pressed the device harder into her throat. Before Will could act she found herself surrounded by nearly a dozen spears. She looked to Lura with pleading eyes, too caught up in the danger of the moment to hate herself for needing the madwoman’s help.
Lura rose to her feet, tossing the butter knife to the ground as if she was making a show of disarming herself. “Okay. Wow.” Dyst rose as well, a look of surprised relief crossing his features at the ambush’s apparent success.
“Lura!” Willow screamed. “Lura, please!” This is how it would end. This was how Willow and her love would be separated--with her dying in agony on the floor, her neck pierced hundreds of times, all while Willow begged the monster to save her. Perhaps they’d find each other again in a better world. The only person capable of coming to Mongrel’s rescue was the woman who had snapped her neck not so long ago. “Help her, please!” Willow sobbed. “Dear gods, please!”
“You hold the cards, Daddy,” Lura spoke slowly. “You run the show. So what do you want from me?”
“This will sound foolish to say, given to whom I’m speaking.” Dyst cleared his throat. “But I suppose I’ll say it anyway: If you come along peacefully, neither of them will be killed. Not today, anyway. An idea has just sprung to mind of how I may yet be able to convince them to join the true god’s cause. You have my word, they won’t be killed. You know I can’t say the same for you. You’ve cut short far too many lives. You will be made to atone for your sins.” His demeanor had reverted back to that of a true believer once his flock had entered the room, though a knowing smirk lingered on his lips. “They’ll be taken to the dungeon. You’ll be taken to your death. And then your judgment in the world beyond. Will you cooperate?”
Mongrel screamed again, and Lura actually seemed to flinch at the sound. “Stop hurting her. Now.” Despite her mind reeling at the horror unfolding before her, Willow’s breath caught in her throat at Lura’s words. “Stop hurting her and I’ll come peacefully. You have my word. You pompous, festering--”
Another twist of the rod’s handle and Mongrel’s screams grew louder before becoming much softer. Willow sobbed and tried to move towards her but was soon shoved back at spearpoint.
“I’ll come!” Lura shouted. There were no further insults. “I’ll come.”
“Thank you.” Dyst motioned to the men pinning Mongrel to the ground. One twisted the handle of the rod again, though this time it seemed to cause the razors inside the collar to retract, albeit only slightly. They still pierced her mate’s flesh but her torment seemed to lessen somewhat. “Thank you,” the Vicar repeated once more. “Though you didn’t know it when you awoke this morning, today is to be the happiest day of your life. You have sinned and must be put to death. But in a few hours’ time, you will be wrapped in the true god’s arms, filled with the spirit of his immeasurable mercy and boundless love.” He clasped his hands, eyes drifting to the ceiling as if he beheld the glorious face of his god before turning to Lura again, a barely noticeable smirk of triumph upon his lips. “You’re welcome.”
The group was led from the room in much the same way as they had entered it, escorted like honored guests. Willow’s wrists were bound with iron. Mongrel was bound by the collar around her neck. And Lura was bound only by her own promise. The Vicar took up a hymn of praise to their ever-hidden god, joined by the faithful pressing their spears into Willow’s back, taken up slowly by each passing guard as they raised their voices in one accord joining in the hymn. Her heart pounded like a funeral drum. Every time she called out her mate’s name it earned her the butt of a pommel being delivered into her back, her sides, her head.
She expected Lura to mock the song, or the vestments in which the Vicar was adorned, or the paintings on the wall or the men leading them. Anything. Anything at all. She found herself wanting to hear her snide remarks, the same mocking tone that she heard in her nightmares. The words would mean that she wasn’t concerned about their current predicament, that she was toying with her prey as she always did, that soon enough she’d have them freed and they’d be sprinting towards the exit.
Lura was silent.
They were marched into another passageway reserved for servants, passing down two flights of stairs and then rather unexpectedly a third. The captives found themselves in a long tunnel leading to the gods only knew what. Willow wouldn’t have been surprised if the gate to the first hell lay in wait at the end of the hallway.
The hymn came to an end just as the tunnel did. Rather than the gate to the underworld, Willow found herself standing before a simple wooden door, a long iron bar holding it shut. The Vicar motioned for the same young man who had led them to his quarters, gesturing to the door as the guard pulled forth a key and began fiddling with the lock holding the bar in place.
“I beg your pardon for the delay,” the Vicar apologized. “The door doesn’t find as much use as it did during the city’s more secular years. One of the former magistrates was fond of a rather detestable sport, and this door thankfully isn’t opened much these days. I think it started with dogfighting, but gradually became more grandiose until the sinners gathered more exotic entertainment. Bears. Large cats. Eventually slaves, of course. Men were forced to battle each other with the promise of bread and another night where they would be allowed to sleep on their masters’ cold stone floors. Those grisly shows are behind us now, praise be to the true god.” He smiled. “Or, at least they will be after tonight.”
The young man finally succeeded in turning the key, and strained as he forced the door open. The room beyond was dark and a foul smell washed over them from whatever lay inside. Willow’s mind reeled. Was he planning on making them fight? Fight what? Some beast, each other, perhaps the two of them battling Lura herself? The thoughts were banished as Mongrel began coughing and at last their eyes were able to meet. The she-wolf was obviously still in pain, but she was aware enough to try to reach for her mate. That was a good sign. It had to be.
“We found the poor creature months ago,” Dyst continued. “He was attracted by the abundance of corpses that littered Nortor’s streets after the recent crusade. The poor thing was quite content to gorge itself on the bodies of sinners, and we had so many of those lying around in those days that we were happy to oblige him. Some of the faithful seem to think of him as a pet. I find that detestable of course. It’s a demon, as you’ll no doubt agree soon enough. But in these dark days, perhaps even demons have their uses.” He smiled at Lura, who remained as still as Willow had ever seen her. “Perhaps one needs a demon to rid the world of a demon. I’m hoping that’s the case anyway.”
Lura sniffed the air again. And then it happened. In her travels with the monster, Willow had seen many things. A shadow made of apathy and nothingness. A woman turned into a horror unlike anything the world had ever seen. Giant serpents, collapsing buildings, a biscuit left for a dying man’s son. And yet nothing could compare to what she saw next. Lura’s eyes widened. Her jaw dropped.
She was horrified.
A simple “No” just barely escaped her lips as the faithful filed past them into the room, their torches bringing light to the empty rows of chairs, the rusty iron bars wrapped in silver razorwire, the sand soaked in the ancient blood of cruelties long past and still so very recent.
And in the center of the pit, it stood. It was immense, the size of the barn inside of which Willow had found the mangled body of her father. It rose to its four paws, a tail the length of half a dozen wagons fanning the foul air, which reeked of unwashed fur and rotten meat. It yawned, a maw like a cavern opening and closing lazily, revealing for one long moment teeth the size of fence posts. Its eyes finally opened, two azure pools surrounding the black abyss of its pupils. Its demeanor immediately changed as it woke fully. The arrival of so many of its caretakers was probably unexpected. Still, the men wrapped in shiny metal could only mean one thing to the simple beast, and today would be no different.
It was feeding time.
Willow craned her neck as the giant wolf continued to rise, until its head was dozens of feet above the ground. It let slip a low, confused growl as its piercing feral eyes finally came to rest upon the woman in the center of the group.
“A relative of yours?” Willow whispered to Lura. It was not the time for a jest, but she felt as though she would either have to laugh or lose her mind.
She was surprised when the madwoman whispered in return: “Yes.” She took a few steps closer to the gate, and Willow’s jaw dropped as she beheld the tears in Lura’s eyes. “My brother.” Lura reached out, grasping the metal bars with her fingers. She seemed ancient in that moment, as if the long years had finally bore down on her at last. Lura’s eyes were fixed upon the beast and Willow could just barely make out her next words.
“Hello, Eloren.”