Chapter Eighteen
Avelina
Darkness filled in the sky, and she stared into a mirrored reflective lake. The world was in full negative. Her heart slowed to a sluggish thump, thump, thump, as Catalysta rose up from the lake.
“This is not a good time,” Avelina growled through her cemented muscles.
“I am here to bestow a gift.”
“A gift?” Her eyebrows furrowed but she couldn’t move the rest of her.
“A gift.” Catalysta confirmed. One moment she was at the center of the lake, in the next, a record skipped and she stood nose to nose with Avelina.
She stared into deep, inky pools behind filthy lace.
The scent of freshly tilled soil and rainstorms filled her nose as she was forced to breathe her goddess in.
Catalysta reached up through her shroud.
With a hard snap, she pulled a finger bone out from her crown.
It was an index finger, that much Avelina could tell.
The Dead Mother slipped the fingerbone out of her shroud and the warlock reached for it foolishly.
Catalysta snatched her hand, mid-air, and spread her fingers painfully wide.
Avelina gasped in surprise, but then the pain started, and she was frozen in time.
All the feelings and sensations of having her right forefinger flayed alive with none of the response.
Forced to stand still, eyes wide with tears welling in them, unable to scream.
Like she was the one with lips sewn shut.
Catalysta used the bone to cut along the seam of her finger.
Then peeled the flesh from the tip all the way back, exposing muscle and dripping sinew.
Avelina stood, a petrified statue, as her goddess snapped off her old finger bone and replaced it.
The new one slid into her knuckle with a click.
It ran a shiver down her back, followed swiftly by cold sweat.
Catalysta pulled all the muscle back onto the bone and sewed the skin using thread from the frayed edge of her shroud.
It was her old finger bone that her patron adorned her crown with.
The record scratched again and Catalysta stood in the middle of the lake again.
A cloak caught in the wind; she skittered backward in a horrifyingly fast fashion that unsettled Avelina.
Whom, at this point, was getting rather used to the horrors that plagued her.
Her patron sank back down into the lake, leaving her warlock with all the pain and the distinct feeling that something in her body was wrong.
Foreign. A ghost. She was a house watching the first ghost form within her walls.
A trapped scream filled her mouth, lips still sewn shut.
Tears filled her vision. They were hot enough to boil her eyes and stung like acid.
Her whole body trembled deep below her skin, unable to move from her spot.
Snap. Splash. Sizzle. The world returned in a singular blink and she howled in pain.
Her knees knocked against the dock as she sank.
Pain was all she knew. There was no describing it other than it took her vision away.
All encompassing. Darkness from edge to edge of her vision, there was nothing but smoke as she screamed harder.
She held her throbbing finger to her chest, able to feel the stitching along her flesh.
Avelina blinked and realized it wasn’t her eyes deceiving her. She didn’t lose her vision.
It was actual darkness.
The whole swamp was dark. A thick smog made of endless black rolled over the muck and she’d been the one to do it.
The slurping of water against the sludgy bank echoed in the darkness, but the moment she stopped screaming, she heard the whispers.
Tiny little hisses danced around her ears.
They waltzed close then back out, disappearing in the darkness.
Avelina held still, peering through the darkness.
It was too thick to see anything, even the tip of her nose.
But thankfully for her, she had something on her that saw things others didn’t.
She drove her good hand into the skirt pocket.
The whispers danced close again, tickling her ears.
She swatted at them like mosquitoes. There was no time to fall for the madness.
Her fingers untangled the seeing stone and fished it out, thankful it hadn’t fallen out in their splashing about earlier.
The rock was a cool balm to her scorched finger. When she raised it to her eye, she saw the last inch of Callum’s tail flick out of view. The Paladins were back-to-back with their shields out before them. She watched them flinch left and right, the voices slipping under their skin.
Touch the water. They breathed in her ears. Step on it. Follow him to shore. Fill our bellies. Feed us. Feed us! Feeeeeeed us!
Avelina swung her legs out from under her.
When she edged her way off the dock, instead of dropping down into the water, she found a firm, silky base.
Her toes spread across a cold, slimy surface.
She braced herself. It took her a moment to get used to the slip.
But with each step, she grew more confident.
Her toes dragged across the surface, silently creeping up on the paladins.
Feed us. Put them in our mouths. We want to taste their life. Eat their bones. Grind their sinew into paste. Lap at the jelly made from the marrow.
It didn’t occur to her until she was on the other dock, using the seeing stone every step of the way, to count the paladins on the other shore. They trembled and spun around in circles. Their armor clinked together as they searched the dark with wide eyes.
There were four in the huddle. Lord Pavlin was not among them.
She found him when the spike of his morning star pierced through the darkness around her.
It didn’t make a sound till it thudded to the ground, and the darkness pushed her away.
Something blunt hit her side and sent her flying.
The soggy mud welcomed her into its arms as she slammed against it and created a trench.
“I have run afoul of some warlocks in my day. But you, Maiden of Madness, are a special kind of heretic.”
Avelina groaned, the darkness creeping back from the edges of the world.
The curtain pulled back and revealed inch after inch of the golden rays overhead.
Here at the lake, The SunBringer held power were the thick canopy was open.
She could see straight up into the sky where the goddess’ visage burned bright.
Lord Pavlin lumbered toward her. Raising his weapon steadily, he kept his hardened eyes on her.
Avelina crawled backward every step he took.
Her concentration broke with one strangled cry.
All the shadows slurped back inside her body, and she was suddenly a firefly jar full of flashing bugs.
Whispers tickled the inside of her ears as the madness settled back inside her blood.
Lord Pavlin and Avelina glanced in unison at the other Paladins.
They were spread out, hands wide. One of them was cheek first in the mud.
Avelina could see his eyes. Wide, frightened, blood trickling out from the edges, in his last few moments the SunBringer’s warrior was petrified.
Callum slithered back in between trees and the others twisted to chase him.
“Do not fall for his bait!” Lord Pavlin bellowed but his Paladins were not his to command anymore.
They were Callum’s prey. Avelina returned her attention to the elder knight standing above her.
Something cruel and wicked crawled up her throat, a broken part of her she’d never indulged before she met Callum escaped.
“You’ve raised them as fools,” she breathed.
Pavlin struck fast. His hand reaching down, he got her by the arm. She couldn’t get away even if she tried. Her hands were buried in the muck and her body was sluggish. Magic had its limits and its price. He hoisted a near-limp body up to meet his gaze.
Weeks ago, had she faced Lord Pavlin, she’d be curled up in a ball.
She’d be a broken record, screaming how sorry she was…
because that’s how they raised her. They made her into a ball of nerves that fretted over loose strings on her skirt.
They made her shrink. They made her cower in their wake.
No more. Her lips curled up into a knowing smirk.
“You’re going to die in this swamp, Lord Pavlin. ”
Eat him. Eat him. Eat him.
“Your father should have burned you with your mother’s corpse,” Lord Pavlin snarled. He wrestled to get ahold of her, and her body was too soft, too pliable. She flopped back down into the mud. A peel of wretched giggles spilled out of her.
Feed him to the beast. And we are the beast. Feed. Feed. Feed.
“Probably.” Her head fell to the side. The whispers, the madness that brewed within her, grew heavy.
It pooled in her belly, and she’d never felt so much power in her life.
Because, despite the fact she sat at his feet, nothing but her skirts and her slowly turning sanity, Lord Pavlin was afraid of her.
He used to be a great man. Eyes detached and uncaring about life before him, his only desire was for the Order.
For his goddess. The man before her stared with frightened flames in his eyes.
A dribble started at his nose. It was small, but the crimson trickled down over the top of his lip.
Stuff him full. Give us to him. Put us in his belly.
Pavlin blinked once, stumbling back a step.
His gloved hand rose to his lip and swiped away the blood.
When he pulled back his glove, the metal rings around the leather showed spots of blood.
His eyes widened just like the dead man a stone’s throw from her.
Another dribble came out of his other nostril and the paladin stepped further back from her.
We hunger. Flesh and bone and marrow and blood. And blood. A lake of his blood.