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Content warning: filth, violence, gore.
Chapter 25
The burning in its chest erupts into a bonfire, engulfing it and driving away all thought but the need to attack. It doesn’t make two steps before the women tighten their grips, fingers digging deep into its flesh. Each grabs a wrist and they twist its arms high behind its back, and forcing it up on its toes.
Deaths. It struggles to break free. The curse needs to kill the demon, and doesn’t care if it dislocates its elbows trying.
N*klabl’ch^gik’dm ooze-covered red and brown skin shines in the lamp light. It towers over its victim. The men on either side pull daggers and attack, but their weapons bounce off. Two tentacles lash out to send them flying, while the others squeeze the woman. Bones crack and her body bends at impossible angles.
The demon pulls its tail from her corpse, flings her against the dais, and vanishes.
The burning pain retreats to its chest and sags in the women’s arms. Terrified screams become shuddering breaths. One councillors faints. Others sit, their bodies shaking with fear and horror. Both Hahark and Davina stay on their feet, though neither are steady, their eyes on the woman’s broken body.
The Litarch of Felcina rises from her knees, the motion slow and pained and made difficult by the chains binding her wrists and ankles. She says, “That creature, Councillor Hahark, is the reason for the ritual.”
“What . . .” Councillor Davina’s voice shakes with horror and disbelief. “What was that thing?”
“The demon N*klabl’ch^gik’dm,” says a woman from the far end of the front row.
It raises its head. The speaker wears a robe and a tall hat, both white and decorated with the God’s seven-pointed star. A Trimagh: the church’s authority in the city. Behind her come two large men, each in dark green robes, the God’s star in gold thread on their chests. The Trimagh’s eyes narrow as she looks at the Litarchs and Dirarchs in chains. “Your Houses signed a contract with the beast, and your actions let the demon loose in our city.”
“With respect, Trimagh Ashinitha,” says the Litarch of Felcina, “Talique, Glarin, and Paskoni freed the demon by Cleansing House Kilcharni. The rest of us have been trying to contain it.”
“The Council gave its approval,” a Girarch—House Talique by the colour of his cloak—protests. “And the Council knows why.”
I don’t, it thinks.
“That is irrelevant,” Councillor Davina snaps, her fear turning to anger. “If you knew this would happen, why did you Cleanse their House?”
“The Mirachs and Dirarchs didn’t know,” the Litarch of Felcina says. “When the generation who signed the contract passed, the Houses decided that only the elders should keep the knowledge of its existence. That way, the Houses would be held blameless, should the church learn of the demon.”
“We were not consulted before the Cleansing,” says the Girarch of House Talique. “Otherwise it would not have happened.”
“You think you will be held blameless for this?” the Trimagh demands, pointing at the woman’s corpse.
“Those responsible are dead, along with fifty others,” the Litarch of Felcina says. “And the demon will continue killing us until our Houses are gone. Then it will wreak havoc anywhere it pleases. We must survive if the city is to be saved.”
Councillor Devina’s face twists with frustration. She asks the Trimagh, “Is this true?”
“Yes.” Ashinitha’s tone is no less furious than Davina’s. “I have read the contracts. In their hubris, the seven Houses made their perpetual existence part of their agreement.”
“When House Kilcharni missed their sacrifice, they gave N*klabl’ch^gik’dm the opening to destroy us,” Felcina’s Litarch says. “We had hoped that by sacrificing that thing,” she nods at it, “we could form a new contract and save the city.”
“How?” demands Councillor Hahark. “Even if it’s a bastard of Kilcharni, what—”
“I am the Death of House Kilcharni!” it shouts, because it doesn’t want to believe what the Litarch says. The councillors stare at it like an animal doing a trick. It snarls, “Not its child.”
“You’re a bastard, sired by Kilcharni’s Dirarch, born between Talint and Silinie,” says the Litarch, a sneer on her face. “Your mother was a whore. When you were three, the girl took you to Kilcharni and demanded a better life. Your father whipped the skin from her body and chained her under the Kilcharni dock. She lasted until the next tidal surge.”
It wants to rip the woman’s head from her shoulders, but the Deaths’ grip on it is too tight.
“I don’t understand,” Councillor Davina says. “If that is the last scion of Kilcharni, and you need all seven Houses to complete the ritual, why in the God’s name were you killing it?”
“We were sacrificing it,” the Litarch correct her, “because it is a thing, not a person. It cannot reproduce to continue its House. Even if it completes the proper rituals, it will only delay things.”
“It could adopt,” says another councillor. “Raise the children as Kilcharni.”
“The contract specifies bloodline,” Trimagh Ashinitha says, her voice grim. “Adoption is not enough.”
“Also, it’s a bastard,” the Litarch says. “Only legitimate House members can make offerings. And only the Council can legitimise a bastard.”
“So we have to legitimise this shit-covered thing and make it Dirarch of Kilcharni?” Hahark demands, “Why not just banish the demon and be done with it?”
The Trimagh shakes her head. “Banishing a major demon has not happened in living memory, and the stories we have do not always tell of success.”
There is grim silence, and when Councillor Davina breaks it, her voice is filled with anger and helplessness. “Can you restore the contract with the demon, Litarch of Felcina?”
“Yes, Councillor,” the Litarch says. “Our Houses wrote into the contract that, if anyone misses a tribute, the seven can redeem the contract by giving double within three months. If House Kilcharni exists again, we can save the city.”
“Until the thing dies and its House ends,” Hahark says. “What will you do then?”
“Can you remove the curse?” Davina asks the Trimagh. “Make it a person so it may rebuild its house?”
The Trimagh looks thoughtful. “Possibly.”
Trimagh Ashinitha steps close to it, and if she finds its stench offensive, she makes no sign. She reaches out and puts her hand on the brand.
Its pain triples, and a noise comes out between its clenched teeth, high-pitched and filled with agony. It tries to break free, to curl up and escape the Trimagh’s touch. But the Deaths keep it still with brutal strength, and one grabs its hair, yanking it upright.
The Trimagh prays.
Agony engulfs it, as if every bone in its body has caught fire and is burning its flesh from within. Screams rip from its throat. Tears blur its vision. It shudders and convulses, and empties whatever remains in its bowels and bladder. The curse within it twists and turns like a living thing.
Then something breaks inside it and everything goes black.
Chapter 25 comes May 30th!
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