Arc 5: Chapter 30: The Soft Matter of Sin

    For a long moment, we just watched each other. I stood in the center of the tower room, Catrin by the moonlit window, with only the sound of the waves stretching over the island’s rock to break the silence.

    I inhaled deeply, and smelled something sickly sweet in the air, a crisp scent it took me a moment to recognize. It smelled like a beetle’s shell, like the deep parts of a lightless wood. Like rot.

    And through the tower’s stone, I could feel a great heart beating in warning.

    My entire focus had been on the figure standing there, framed in the window. But now I paid more attention, the shadows around her seemed to move. I could hear many tiny, scuttling legs around me, beating wings, and clacking mandibles. All those sounds fused into one chorus, and the demon spoke.

    Your ploy this night almost had me, marked one.

    I felt certain I would taste the bite of your axe.

    Some of the insects were crawling on Catrin herself. I bared my teeth. “Let her go.”

    I will not.

    Something crawled up the side of Catrin’s neck. A crimson beetle. She shuddered, but made no move to bat it away.

    Inside, I felt terrible relief at seeing her right there in front of me. And fear, because another innocent had been used by this thing as a suit, and Yith had not been gentle with that poor boy’s undead flesh. In addition to an array of lesser injuries, mostly cuts and bruises on her arms and neck, I could also make out the mottled tissue surrounding a more hideous wound in her shoulder. Her hair and clothes were filthy, like she’d just crawled out of a pit.

    Or a grave.

    I also couldn’t help but note the injuries I had given her, the burns. The sight of those made me feel even more sick than the bugs did.

    Forcing myself to calm, and fighting against the rising surge of sacred fire eager to show itself and smite this evil, I spoke in the most level voice I could manage.

    “What do you want?” Then, looking at Catrin I asked, “Is she actually alive?”

    Yith giggled, the entire room seeming to tremble with the sound. I felt as though I were surrounded by ten thousand unseen insects. The sensation was a disorienting one.

    She is not!

    She was not when you were inside her all those times.

    Oh, you are a naughty one. No wonder Tormentsister had your fancy.

    Catrin just stared at me in watchfull stillness. The beetle poised beneath her left ear. I could make out a strange deformation on the shell.

    A face. Its lips moved.

    Grappling my fury into submission, I spoke through gritted teeth. “You know what I mean.”

    “It’s me,” Catrin said softly. “He hasn’t hurt me, not yet.” She winced and placed a hand to the hole in her shoulder. “Besides this.”

    The unnatural laughter subsided, and the demon let a long moment of uneasy silence linger.

    The shell is not emptied.

    She could be restored to you.

    Whole, and unaltered.

    I understood the threat. “What do you want of me?”

    I want...

    Ah, I want so many things!

    ...I want to crawl through you and feast on the rotting hollow of your soul.

    I want to spread myself across this land and burrow into every misdeed, every hateful thought, every bitter regret...

    I want to share in the depravities and failures of your people.

    To whisper in their ears until their thin armor breaks from the holes in it and I can watch them crumble into their true selves.

    I want to nest in the soft matter of your sins.

    Catrin drew in a sharp breath and closed her eyes. She almost seemed entranced by the demon’s voice.

    As for what I want from you...

    I want my freedom.

    I frowned. “Your freedom?”

    I have only ever named one mortal my master by mine own choice.

    And Hyperia Vyke is not Reynard.

    Yet, the witch child holds my names in bondage.

    The voice went silent. Catrin focused, then fixed her red eyes on me. “He wants you to kill her. The princess.”

    “You want me to murder your own ally?” I asked in disbelief.

    The demon’s crooning voice became a furious hiss.

    My slaver.

    A thief.

    Murderer interloper coward liar betrayer halfbreed witch sinner usurper bastardchildhateherkillherrendbreakshredripteardevourBURNFLAYDAMNTOHELL—

    Both Catrin and I gasped, staggering under the onslaught of that wave of rage. It was a physical, almost elemental thing, a buzzing, shrieking torrent of pure and unrestrained hate.

    As quickly as it had come, it stopped.

    We are not allies.

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    But if I did play along, tens of thousands might suffer. My homeland might burn again, even as the ashes from the last conflict were still in the process of cooling. To indulge Yith would be to betray my queen and the new vow I had sworn to the nation she served.

    Watching Catrin’s miserable expression, I felt my jaw set into a stubborn line. I would find a way.

    “I’m going to get you out of this, Cat. I swear it.”

    “How?” She asked dully. “You heard him.”

    There were exorcisms, ways to cleanse her of the demon’s influence. Nothing good ever came of trusting an abgru?dai to play fair.

    Some of my blood must have still been in her, because Catrin’s eyes fixed on me sharply. “You try to burn him out of me, you’ll end up destroying us both. Don’t you remember what happened earlier? Your magic hates me as much as it hates him.”

    She made no effort to disguise the bitterness in her voice. “This whole land resents me being here. It hates me for not staying dead like I’m supposed to.”

    My heart squeezed. I had seen her melancholic, but never like this. “I am so sorry, Cat. I didn’t realize... if I’d remembered, been more cautious, it wouldn’t have happened like that.”

    She let out a tired sigh. “I think it would have, eventually. It’s not really your power, is it? You’re just a vessel, a conduit. We were playing with fire, Al. Should have expected to get burned.”

    “That’s Yith talking.”

    Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe.”

    The demonic beetle on her neck had vanished. Swallowing, I reached out a hand. “Let me at least see to your wounds.”

    Catrin stared at my hand a long moment, then shook her head. “No. Better I don’t stick around here. You don’t need distractions in the middle of everything else, and... I might be dangerous right now. I can still hear him whispering to me.”

    I put more force into my voice. “You are not a distraction.”

    A familiar wry smile quirked her lips. “I always was. Like you said, I’m the little monster. I punched out of my weight, and the exact thing you warned me about happened. This is my fault.”

    “No,” I said forcefully. “This is him. You were just trying to do the right thing.”

    “I was trying to impress you,” she said bluntly. “I never really cared about revenge or saving the kingdom. I just liked the way you were with me.”

    Her head tilted to one side, her gaze sliding away from my face. “Selfish, isn’t it? And now I’ve gone and messed everything up.”

    “I will find a way to save you,” I promised her.

    “And get this war you’ve been trying to stop in the bargain?” Her smile turned brittle. “I’m not worth it.”

    My mouth opened, then closed. I’d been about to say she was.

    But I didn’t really need to say it, either. Catrin shook her head. “I’m not. I don’t want that.”

    She backed out of the moonlight, and I could seeher body sinking into the darkness like it were black water. Desperate, I took another step forward.

    “Don’t go. It’s not safe for you to be alone right now, Cat.”

    “He doesn’t want me near you,” she said regretfully. “He says you’ll kill me, to save me from worse.”

    “I wouldn’t!”

    I could only see her face now. She gave me a sad smile. “You would. No matter how much it would hurt, you’d do it for me. That’s part of what I love about you.”

    I begged her to stop, but the next moment she had gone. Vampire and demon fled into the cracks between worlds, and I could no longer reach them.

    I’m not certain how long I stood there, listening to the waves and the empty quality of Catrin’s absence. Through my magic, I could still feel Yith’s brief onslaught of hate like a burn mark in the world. Perhaps it would always linger in this tower, like an unseen stain.

    In a daze, I pulled my axe out of the darkness. Resting it in my shaking hands, I felt the dull despair creeping through me since the cemetery surge up strong enough to choke. Why show me how to touch her world, if I couldn’t be with her there?

    I tossed the damned thing onto the floor, letting it clang over the stones.

    Three days. Three to kill Hyperia, and four to make sure two war-hungry lunatics didn’t win the tournament. But if I killed the witch, I may as well kill her brother. It would end the same.

    Leave the Vykes be, and do my duty by the realms. Spare them, and betray Catrin to a fate worse than death. Kill them, and betray everyone else.

    I wasn’t cut out for this. A crueler man would know what to do.

    Something stirred in the darkness. A soft thump, and a rustling noise. Immediately I went on guard. Had Yith returned? Or was it just the shades?

    Turning, I scanned the chamber. I saw nothing, and got no warning stir from my magic. But there had been something.

    My eyes fell on my cluttered desk. A breeze through the open window had scattered some paperwork. Approaching the desk, my eyes quickly fell on a single black book, little more than a journal, open to one of the middle pages.

    Lias’s book. I hadn’t been reading it lately. Had it been opened by the wind?

    The thought that spies might have been snooping around up here also passed through my thoughts. I did need some kind of guard.

    Picking the book up, I glanced at the page it had been open on. It wasn’t one of the transcriptions the wizard had copied from the works of other scholars, but my old friend’s personal research. I knew by the signature he’d left on it. Arrogant fop.

    I started reading, and my heart began to beat quicker. Once again, I glanced around the room to see if I was truly alone. There was no sign of any soul, living or dead.

    Had one of the ghosts helped me? They weren’t all malicious, though the more benign ones tended to keep away for fear of the predators prone to dogging my steps.

    Forcing calm, I looked back down to the page. The first passage was titled On the subject of extraplanar summoning, and of binding names.

    This could not be a coincidence. Lifting my eyes, I spoke to the seemingly empty room.

    “Whoever you are, thank you.”

    Whether a ghost or some fey spirit tailing me from the elfwood, they had given me a small measure of hope. My plan might still work. Calerus, Hyperia, Yith, and all the other parasites who would turn my home into a waking nightmare would regret drawing my ire.

    I did not know if it would be the Headsman of Seydis or Rosanna’s Sword who would raise steel at the end, but neither man would fail the people he loved.

    End of Arc 5