Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The weeping greeted me even before the warmth of the fire could wrap itself around my bones.
I didn’t tense at the sound, too used to the morbid sonnets which echoed around the Cavern of Lost Souls to pay them much mind.
Another offering to the dark, another sacrifice to the ether.
Whoever it was who found themselves awaiting their end in this place, I was confident they were deserving of it.
The most corrupt souls were the most potent after all. Mine would be worthy indeed.
I stepped into the large cavern at the heart of this place, the wide firepit burning with a well-stocked fire which warmed the air so thoroughly that I could feel it baking my skin even at this distance.
I was dressed appropriately for the cavern today, the thin, taupe dress I wore leaving far more of my figure on show than would ever be practical for war but in this place I’d never once felt vulnerable to the weapons of Fae.
Here, only the ether might claim me and that was a fate no armour could protect against.
I looked up at the three figures who hung by their feet above the fire, coils of air magic keeping them in place.
The woman to the right was the one weeping, low murmurs and pleas for mercy passing between her ragged cries.
The man to her right was dead, his throat cut and blood still pooling in a bronze bowl which was suspended between him and the flames, the red liquid bubbling as it boiled within.
The third woman was staring stoically at the wall, stowed away within the confines of her mind and perhaps succeeding in losing herself to her memories. It was likely the best course of action available to any who found themselves in her place.
A cry for mercy drew my attention to the far right of the space, beyond the crowd of Sages who danced and writhed to the solitary beat of a drum, their bodies smeared with the blood of their sacrifice.
Around ten more Fae awaited their fate there, bound and bruised, the cut of their clothes betraying them all as citizens of Pyros.
Tifon pranced by me, his arms waving in the air, shirt removed and the ridges of many scars revealed across his withered chest, each one an intentional cut made in sacrifice by his own hand.
“Good pickings today, Sky Witch!” he called merrily, prancing away again to circle the fire, euphoria clinging to him as he lost all sense of himself to the blood magic.
Perhaps today had been a poor choice on my part.
But I’d been riddled with a plague of my own regrets in that palace and Moya was the closest thing I had to family, or even a friend, in the whole of Stormfell right now.
I hadn’t thought to ask whether the Sages had been gifted any prisoners of war upon our return.
An excess of sacrifices like these would keep them in this wild state of ecstasy for weeks as they feasted on blood magic with gluttonous abandon.
I’d be lucky to get an ounce of sense out of any of them.
“Please,” a man called from the group to the rear of the room and I found his eyes on me.
I didn’t need to get any closer to ask what he was begging me for, his desires reaching out to envelop me whole.
He wanted nothing more than a swift death at the hands of a warrior in place of the slow end he knew he would face in this chamber of horrors.
Something twisted in my gut and I moved faster through the exuberant Sages, my bare feet warm on the stone floor beneath me, the thin dress slipping over my legs in ragged lengths.
The group of Flamebringers stirred as I approached, some cursing and backing away, others crying out for the mercy of a quick death just as the first had done.
“Let me meet Aries at the hands of a warrior,” the man begged as I made it to them. “Even a witch might understand the right for that mercy.”
“The right?” I mused, my gaze roaming over these Fae who flinched and cowered in the face of their demise. I couldn’t blame them. This place was all the best kinds of terrifying. “Tell me then, in full honesty, what was it you were doing when you were captured and brought here?”
“We were simply fighting in the war as any guardian of their citizens would do. Just as you do for Stormfell. But our people would never subject you to this,” a woman accused, glaring out at the jubilant Sages and I followed her gaze.
She had a point. I’d never heard of blood magic being celebrated or encouraged in any of the other lands the way it was here, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t felt her desire to hide the whole truth from me within her pretty words.
“Hmm…” I took the draining dagger from the sheath strapped around my upper thigh and inspected the runes carved into its hilt. I wasn’t allowed to carry any weapons in this place aside from this one blade and its purpose was blood magic, not fighting.
“A quick end,” another man begged, seeing my action as indecision.
“The whole truth or it’s no deal,” I purred, a wicked smile forming on my lips which made the group cower and cringe.
“And just to be clear – I can feel it when you lie or try to conceal details from me. Your desire to hide the full extent of your crimes has been noted already and I’m inclined to abandon you to this fate. ”
“Fine,” a brute of a man with a broken nose spat, his eyes blazing with defiance as he met my steely gaze.
“We were a raiding party. We’d won the fight with the warriors defending the town and were claiming the bounty of our victory when your people accosted and corralled us.
We were doing nothing more or less than you have done in our lands, Sky Witch. ”
“And did you enjoy that part of the raiding?” I asked, stepping closer to him, my gifts coiling around him and tying him in my thrall.
His throat bobbed, his bloody nose wheezing a soft whistle of doom as I reached out to place my fingers against the stubble on his jaw and gave a sharp tug with my gifts.
A flash of desire hit me with a vision of his memory too, the sick pleasure he took from ‘claiming bounty’ as he called it. Murdering civilians, butchering the old and the young alike. This group had been very fond of doing that.
“How long did you spend haunting the villages of my land?” I asked and my hold over him tugged on his desire to boast despite the fact that he really should have known better than to give in to it.
But this bastard wanted to boast, he was proud of what he’d done and in the hold of my gifts he wasn’t able to think better of doing so.
“We were here for the battle of Armond almost a year past. When the rest of our people retreated after the victory, we…stayed on to further celebrate our dominion over the sky rats we hate so very dearly. You really should do a better job of protecting your farmlands you know – it was so fucking easy to carve our way through them and kill every dirty, rotten Skyforger we fou–”
My fist connected with his broken nose and he screamed so loud the sound echoed off of the roof of the cavern and out into its darkest corners.
The Sages all paused in their merriment, turning to look at us before cheering and laughing and moving back to their morbid festivities.
“That’s the funny thing about blood magic,” I said as I backed away from the doomed Flamebringers, offering them a dark smile as I went.
“It works best when the sacrifice is deserving of their fate. Don’t worry – you’ll have plenty of time to come to that conclusion too.
Some of you will be here for months awaiting your end, watching your comrades as they’re carved apart piece by piece.
Those bastards up there–” I pointed to the three sacrifices hanging over the fire, the first to have been selected for this voracious display.
“They’re the lucky ones. They’ll all be dead within the week and this revelry will calm.
The Sages will have had their blood orgy and then they’ll save the rest of you to use in rites for weeks and months, bit by bit by bit.
The best you can hope for is that they’ll be in need of another death to pay for some big magic because if they don’t, your suffering will go on and on and on. ”
I turned my back on their cries for mercy, not feeling the least bit of guilt over their destiny. Some Fae were wholly deserving of their fates and this place would at least make them pay for the crimes they’d committed even if it would do nothing to return those they’d killed from death.
A hand snatched me into the throng of revelling Sages and I gasped as Moya tugged me into a twirl around the fire, her wild red hair flying about her smiling face, blood painted in dark lines down her chin and throat.
“Have you been listening?” she called, spinning me beneath her arm and I let myself be turned around, the flames blurring in my vision before I was back in her arms again, navigating the cavern.
“I have,” I agreed and she smiled widely. She was missing a tooth at the edge of her grin, one of her molars gone in favour of a dark hole.
“Been offering up pieces of yourself to the dark again?” I asked, bobbing my chin at it and she shrugged.
“Always figured I had too many teeth anyway. Hasn’t made much difference to the way I chew – only the way I grin.”
I snorted, letting her spin me again but as she caught hold of me, she jarred us to a halt, the other Sages dancing on around us as she peered into my eyes for several achingly long seconds before clucking her tongue and striding away.
I swallowed thickly, not wanting to ask what she’d just seen in the dark corners of my soul and following her through the crowd to the curving slope which led up to her living chambers.
Moya moved quickly, her bare feet silent on the cool stone and I was almost running to catch up to her by the time we entered the packed confines of her chambers.