Published at 31st of August 2023 10:00 am

Chapter 33

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After putting the disfigured and possessed Elphin out of her misery and thereby releasing the many souls within her, the Brute went over to the old tomes and scrolls. He spent a long time going through it all, but then he found what he was searching for. A scroll with a list of Daemon names and what seemed like short descriptions of them and how to summon them.

“Have you found the Name you seek?”

He grunted affirmatively.

“So, what now?”

“Summon here.”

Ciana took an involuntary step back in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“This Daemon peculiar. Must do it here.”

She spent a few agonising moments wondering if she had helped someone who was exactly the same as the Magisters that had experimented on her and killed so many others like her. She eventually came to a conclusion and steeled herself.

“What can I do to help?” she asked.

“Can you read?”

“Not well, no,” she replied. She knew how to speak Lleman, Novarocian, and Demonic, but she had never fully learnt to read any of the languages, picking up only the words and such from Lleman and Novarocian that were necessary for her solitary life of staying away from major population centres.

Heskel grunted, but then came to some decision. “Repeat after me as I work.”

She nodded and followed him to the centre, where the lifeless Elphin girl lay, the chains removed from her and the pervasive stench of the possessing demons gone.

To her immense dismay, Heskel’s ‘work’ turned out being the skinning of the Elphin using a ritual knife taken from one of the dead Magisters.

“What are you doing!?”

“Necessary.”

“Didn’t you say Elphin are sacred to you!?”

He did not turn from his task, knelt before the lifeless body and carefully and methodically moving the blade to loosen the top layer of skin from the dermis below. Then he began to speak, as though quoting someone, “Listen well. We honour the dead by using every part of their bodies. We use their bones for blades and tools. We use their skin for clothes and bags. We use their tissue and organs for offerings. We use their blood for rituals and rites. To let decay have the dead is to eternally damn them.”

“I… but…”

“Repeat after me,” he then said, brokering no argument, before reciting some strange litany that, even with her understanding of Demonic, was almost incomprehensible.

She continued to repeat the litany, like a prayer, over-and-over, while he worked the harvested skin of the Elphin into some strange shape with his bare hands and muttered esoteric hymns.

After a few hours of repeating the litany, she had memorised it perfectly, and the Brute had worked the Elphin skin into a beautiful, albeit terrifying, mask of hardened grey leather covered in white splotches.

Unlike the tanneries Ciana had had the misfortune of coming across, Heskel’s work was odourless and impossible to look away from, in the same way that observing woodworkers had in the past spellbound her.

After the Elphin Mask was completed, the Brute took the body and moved it to the back of the room, near the dead Magisters and the ancient texts. He then drew out a large pattern on the floor where the Elphin had been chained to earlier, using the blood of the three Magisters as paint and a brush made from their hair.

Ciana stepped back towards one of the walls so that she could take in the entire thing. It was both haunting and alluring in equal measure. The linework was flawless despite the crude tool in his hand and the patterns were eye-catching, with the crimson lines stark against the grey stone floor. She had seen some rituals in the past when she was a prisoner of the Academy, but none had been as complex nor as masterfully painted.

In the centre of the symbol was a strange sigil that looked like a septagram drawn incorrectly, except it had been made with deliberate care, despite the fact that the lines did not cross like they were supposed to and there were several more lines crisscrossing the points of the star than necessary. She also found the lack of candles confusing, as she had always assumed these were necessary for such rituals.

At the centre of this bizarre septagram was a small circle, wherein the Elphin mask had been placed. Another ring surrounded the outer circle of the septagram, without connecting to it, and from this circle sprouted four wing-like triangles, within which were written the curly script of demonic, though to what end she had no way of knowing, illiterate as she were.

She wandered over to where Heskel was re-reading the scroll he had found.

“What now?”

“Need more blood.”

“Why?”

“Offering.”

Like two avenging spirits, Heskel and Ciana scoured the last two wings of the Academy for survivors who had not yet made the wise decision of running for the hills.

They eventually found a half-dozen students, who they easily killed and drained of their blood, but even all their blood was apparently not enough for the Brute, who carried squelching skin-pouches sloshing with lifeblood as they continued hunting.

Towards the end of the day they found about a dozen more Magisters and students, who were hiding amongst animal pens holding slaves. Ciana was both relieved and troubled by the fact that all the slaves were humans, as she had secretly been holding out hope of rescuing a young Elphin after they had been forced to slay the girl in the crypt out of mercy.

Heskel had broken the locks on the pens, but left the human livestock unharmed. After draining the bodies and having to construct another pouch for holding the many litres of blood, the Brute started back towards the crypt, while Ciana told the frightened prisoners which way to go to escape the Academy and find civilisation. Many of them were so emaciated that she doubted they would survive long, but hope had a way of sustaining people beyond their natural limits, so anything was possible.

Once they were back within the confines of the crypt, Heskel constructed a large trough that circled around the summoning sigil, by gouging-in the floor. He poured the fifty-plus-litres of blood into this hastily-made trench, so that there were now three rings to the entire painting, the outer one obviously being the largest.

With this final step done, he took Ciana by the hand, and they stepped over the trough so that they stood before the second ring with the four wings. He bade her kneel on the stone before the drawing, then he drew a ring large enough for both of them to fit in, before drawing a line that connected their ring to the trench and then through the second ring and connecting to the septagram.

He took her hands and put them on the dry linework in front of them and then said,

“Recite.”

Ciana took a deep breath, drawing the memorised litany from her mind, then, with careful attention to the syllables and the sing-song flow of the demonic tongue, she began to recite.

“Belamouranthyne, heed my singing bell!”

“Lady Legion, whose gaze enthrals even Kings, see what offerings I brought!”

“Belladonna Flower, O how I long to taste thou essence, let me witness thy blooming!”

“Belamouranthyne, I sound the bells of ecstasy and rapturous merry, let their sounds carry thee forth! Let thy illustrious figure manifest in this realm that is thine by right! Let these humble eyes of mine behold thy splendour!”

Immediately, the blood in the trench around them started lifting into the air above them like a sentient crimson wave, before surging into the very centre of the summoning sigil, which was glowing a soft violet along its lines. The blood began swirling around like a waterspout within the septagram and reached all the way to the ceiling, but the chaos quickly settled and fell inward, taking on the form of a voluptuous female figure, who was holding the Elphin Mask aloft. The gaze of this born-of-blood figure moved over them, before settling on the script within the four wings of the second circle. As it read the text, the letters set alight in a violet fire and became charred black.

Then there came a melodramatic sigh, followed by a voice that reminded Ciana of a prostitute she had once known. “To be summoned by an untouchable sort such as you… But, alas, I find your contract favourable. May you use me well, half-spawn.”

Then the figure of blood was pulled into the Elphin Mask and vanished from sight. The mask, which had been held between her fingers, clattered to the floor, seeming to have gained a significant amount of mass from the completion of the ritual.

Neither Heskel nor Ciana moved for a few minutes after, even though the violet glow was gone, and the crimson linework had become coal-black.

The Brute was the first to stand and take a step out of their circle, and she thought she saw a moment of hesitation from him, as though he feared what they had brought into the world.

He turned and seemed to regard her with newfound respect.

“Well done.”

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