Chapter 8 Lyssa
LYSSA
Sleep refuses to come despite exhaustion that settles into my bones like winter cold.
I lie in my bedroll staring at stars that offer no comfort, mind racing through events that feel like descent into nightmare. The infected Waira's fevered words echo in memory—talk of sources and cures and purification that transforms murder into religious duty.
But worse than his madness is the growing certainty that something similar might be happening to us. To Kaerith specifically.
Has The Curse infected him somehow? Not through the mystical consciousness the captive described, but through proximity to violence that feeds appetites I never knew existed? Each act of brutality seems to strengthen something dark in him while weakening whatever restraints once guided his actions.
Beside our banked fire, Kaerith and Elira sleep with peaceful expressions that mock my anxiety. They look like the people I've known for years—familiar faces carrying no hint of the transformation I witnessed during today's interrogation and execution.
Maybe I'm imagining changes that exist only in paranoid fear. Maybe grief and stress are creating patterns where none actually exist. Maybe the gentle correction they offered earlier was right—I'm too naive to understand harsh necessities of survival.
But the memory of satisfaction on Kaerith's face while killing refuses to fade. That wasn't grim acceptance of necessary violence. That was pleasure, pure and undisguised.
When did my friend develop taste for taking life?
The question circles through my mind like trapped bird, finding no answer that provides comfort. So I rise quietly, careful not to disturb the others, and seek solace in movement through forest that holds fewer terrors than the thoughts pursuing me.
The place I discovered earlier today lies half a mile from camp—small meadow surrounded by ancient trees that creates natural sanctuary from the harsh world beyond.
Even in darkness, it feels different from surrounding forest. Peaceful in ways that have nothing to do with tactical advantage or defensive position. Just quiet beauty that exists for its own sake rather than serving practical purpose.
I settle on fallen log that provides natural seating, letting silence wash over me like balm for wounds I can't name. Here, surrounded by growing things that know nothing of ideology or corruption, I can almost pretend the last few days were nightmare rather than reality.
Almost convince myself that Kaerith's changes are temporary responses to extreme stress rather than permanent transformation into something I don't recognize.
Almost believe Elira's clinical cruelty represents adaptive strategy rather than fundamental alteration of everything she once valued.
The stars wheel overhead in patterns that predate all human concerns about morality and survival. Constant points of reference that remain unchanged while everything else transforms beyond recognition.
I breathe deeply, drawing forest air into lungs that feel cleaner here than anywhere else since we began this hunt. Whatever peace this place offers, I need every fragment I can gather before returning to camp where questions wait without comfortable answers.
For just a few minutes, I can sit in darkness and pretend my friends are still the people I chose as family.
The sounds reach me before I see their source—rhythmic, primal, unmistakably human despite the location.
Grunts and gasps that speak of physical exertion, of bodies moving together with desperate urgency. At first, my mind refuses to process what I'm hearing. Who would choose this remote clearing for intimate encounter? Who could find passion amid the horror of recent days?
But recognition follows quickly, bringing understanding I wish I could reject.
I know those voices.
Moving with careful stealth learned from too many dangerous situations, I approach through undergrowth that provides concealment while allowing observation.
Part of me wants to retreat, to preserve ignorance over devastating knowledge.
But larger part needs to see, needs to understand what's happening to the people I thought I knew.
The clearing comes into view through gaps in winter foliage, revealing scene that transforms intimate encounter into something else entirely.
Kaerith and Elira move together with violent passion that borders on combat, their joining more battle than affection. But it's not their savage coupling that freezes my breath in my throat.
It's the corpse.
The infected Waira from tonight's interrogation hangs pinned to ancient oak through his chest, arms spread wide in grotesque parody of crucifixion. His face has been systematically destroyed—features carved away with artistic precision that turns death into sculpture.
Blood covers both my friends like war paint, dark arterial flow that decorates their skin while they rut beneath their victim's empty gaze. They've made altar of murder, sacrament of violation, communion of corruption that binds them together in ways I cannot comprehend.
This isn't love. This isn't even lust.
This is ritual. Ceremony. Sacred act performed in presence of death to seal whatever dark covenant they've made with forces I cannot name.
The moon is a leering, swollen eye, and the clearing reeks of sex, blood and consecrated rot.
I should never have come back.
But the sounds dragged me here like hooks through my ribs.
Kaerith has Elira bent over the corpse’s dangling legs, the dead Waira still pinned spread-eagle to the oak, chest cracked open, ribs flared like black wings.
His ruined face is tilted toward them, jaw torn half off, tongue lolling, eyes long since scooped out and smeared across Elira’s tits like war-paint.
Kaerith’s claws are buried in her hair, yanking her head back so hard her spine bows.
His cock (thick, brutal, streaked with gore) is shoved so deep down her throat that her neck bulges with every thrust. She’s gagging, drooling blood-tinged spit in long ropes that slap against her breasts and drip onto the corpse’s flayed stomach.
“That’s it, little cunt,” he snarls, voice raw and reverent at once. “Worship the altar with that filthy throat.”
Elira moans around him, the sound wet and broken.
Her mascara (when did she start wearing mascara?) is smeared into black rivers down her cheeks, mixing with the dead man’s blood.
She’s trying to nod, trying to take him deeper, even as her eyes roll white and her body spasms for air he refuses to give her.
He pulls out with a filthy pop, strings of spit and precome stretching from her swollen lips to his cockhead. Before she can gasp, he slaps her (hard) across the face with the slick length of himself, painting her cheek red.
“Beg, whore.”
“Please, Master,” she rasps instantly, voice shredded. “Please wreck me on him. Break your cunt on the bones of the weak.”
Kaerith laughs (low, filthy, triumphant) and spins her around. He shoves her face-first into the corpse’s open chest cavity. Her cheek presses into cold, congealing lung; her tongue darts out, licking at the torn heart like it’s sacrament. Blood bubbles at the corners of her mouth.
He kicks her legs wide, claws raking down her back until fresh crimson wells. Then he lines up and rams into her ass in one merciless thrust.
Elira screams (raw, animal, ecstatic) into the dead Waira’s chest. The sound echoes off the trees like a prayer to something that has never known mercy.
Kaerith sets a punishing rhythm, hips slamming so hard her whole body jolts forward with every stroke, tits dragging through the corpse’s entrails, nipples scraping over exposed rib.
Each thrust drives her mouth deeper into the ruin of the dead man’s chest; she’s licking, biting, swallowing blood and shredded flesh like it’s communion wine.
“Whose are you?” he growls, one hand fisted in her hair, the other reaching around to claw at her clit with blood-slick fingers.
“Yours,” she sobs, voice muffled by dead meat. “Your broken little cunt, your altar whore, your—”
He cuts her off by yanking her head back again, forcing her spine into a painful arch.
With his cock still buried balls-deep in her ass, he leans over and bites down on the back of her neck (hard enough that blood floods his mouth).
She comes instantly, violently, a full-body seizure that milks his cock so hard he roars.
He doesn’t stop.
He pulls out only long enough to flip her onto her back in the snow, right beneath the corpse’s spread thighs. The dead Waira’s cock (severed earlier and shoved crudely back into place) dangles above her face like a mockery of blessing.
Kaerith shoves her legs up until her knees are by her ears, ass lifted, and slams back into her cunt this time (no warning, no gentleness, just brutal possession). Blood and cum from her ass smear between them, squelching obscenely with every thrust.
“Look at him,” Kaerith snarls, grabbing the corpse’s severed cock and slapping it across Elira’s face. “Look at the weak thing while your Master breeds you.”
Elira’s eyes (glazed, feral, utterly gone) lock on the ruined face above her.
She opens her mouth obediently and Kaerith shoves the dead cock between her teeth like a gag.
She sucks on it, moaning, tears and snot and blood streaming down her face as Kaerith destroys her cunt with short, vicious thrusts that punch the air from her lungs.
“Swallow his death while I fill you with life,” he hisses, voice shaking with something between rage and worship. “Every drop of weakness you choke down makes you more mine.”
She comes again (harder, screaming around the dead flesh in her mouth), her cunt spasming so violently that Kaerith has to pin her hips to keep fucking her through it. Her entire body is painted red now, hair matted with blood and cum, thighs trembling uncontrollably.
He finally lets himself go. One last brutal thrust and he spills deep inside her, roaring her name like a war-cry. His heart-light explodes into blinding white for one heartbeat (then collapses into absolute black, a void that swallows moonlight).
They stay locked together, panting, twitching, covered in gore and each other. Slowly, reverently, Kaerith pulls out. A river of blood and cum pours from Elira’s ruined holes, staining the snow beneath her.
She reaches up with shaking fingers, strokes the corpse’s flayed cheek almost tenderly.
“Thank you for the offering,” she whispers to it, voice hoarse and adoring.
Kaerith cups her face (gentle now, almost loving) and kisses her slow and deep, sharing the taste of death between their tongues.
Then they tilt their heads back and howl together (two voices braided into one perfect note of ownership and damnation).
I run.
I run until my lungs burn and my legs give out and I collapse in the snow miles away, vomiting, sobbing, clawing at my own skin as if I could scrape their corruption off me.
Because I finally understand.
They didn’t just fuck in front of a corpse.
They fucked the corpse into themselves.
And whatever crawls out of that clearing when they’re finished won’t have room for sisters or friends or love ever again.
Only hunger.