Addendum #2
The vessel of hearts burst into crimson flame. The glass did not crack so much as collapse, disintegrating all at once into glittering sand. Its cargo of flesh slithered down the mountain of riches, dousing the Madman’s every treasure in molten scarlet fire.
All except one.
“It is time, supplicant,” intoned Prelati. “The Spirit awaits release. Bring it forth.”
Livia watched open-mouthed as Gilles de Rais stepped outside his protective Wards.
She transitioned from incredulity to high anxiety as he then stepped inside the greater silver Circle.
2 Almost immediately, his anima began to rise off him like mist. He extended the ceremonial rapier and suddenly she understood.
“My lady!” sang the Marshal of France. He cast the rapier into the flames.
Sebastian and the old one swore in unison as they saw the polished bone pommel of its hilt.
“Rise!” boomed Prelati. “Take what is offered, for it is yours! Come to the flesh!”
Thick smoke was rising from the bonfire, and within its twisting plumes, a figure began to take shape.
“Yes! JEHANNE!” Rais was screaming now. Urine puddled between his feet. He raised his hands to the insubstantial figure. “FOR GLORY! JEHANNE!”
But Prelati called a different name.
“Come, Barron!” he boomed. “Come, Mars! Come, Ares! COME, AVSTAMET!”
The room seemed somehow to contract as the figure in the smoke came forward.
Impressions flashed through Livia’s mind as it drew nearer.
A mouth rimmed with knives. A monstrous wolf, big enough to swallow the moon.
It keened. It strained. Livia struggled to keep her balance as the laws of matter began to stretch for its unspeakable birth.
“My lady . . . Jehanne?” Gilles de Rais was mad, but even he could see that the presence above the conflagration was not the Maid of Orleans. He turned to his sorcerous lover. “What . . . what have you done, Francois?”
“What you Contracted me to do, my darling,” answered Prelati, all of his focus on the rising conflagration. He disdained to even look at the nobleman. “I have raised the Spirit in the relic, and now it will be made flesh.”
“But . . . Jehanne! Where is she?!”
Now! Quickly, kill them! the old one crowed. Half-breed, take the cretin. We will handle the sorcerer. Barron is ours!
“Finally!” Livia ran out from behind the pillar, followed closely by the master.
She spun her glamers thicker and thicker, ready to unleash them upon the stricken Gilles.
The master stalked across the floor with his silver blade flashing at the ready.
Above him, the old one gathered his form into a pillar of Arcane flame so intense it began to arc into the Mundane spectrum, projecting frightful silhouettes onto the walls.
Come Barron! he screamed, with the hunger of millennia. I am here for your immortal essence!
The great presence taking form in the Circle was indistinct, but Livia felt its attention alight on them like the heat of a star. It emitted a pulse of something—part sound, part sensation, part intention—which resolved into words in her mind.
COME, THEN.
But they were all to be disappointed.
Livia was lifted from her feet as the great hall shook once again. The back wall exploded inward, showering all of them with debris.
She landed in a tangle of limbs next to Sebastian.
“There they are!” The man’s voice was familiar, but in her dazed state, she couldn’t quite place it. Livia sat up, blinking and rubbing the back of her skull. “The abomination has led us true! Take them all! Find the relic! In the name of the Archangel!”
A wide section of the far wall had been destroyed, leaving a crumbling hole.
Over the rubble charged the men of the Rouen Guard, their voices raised in psalms of devotion.
Behind them came Captain Renard himself, brandishing his silver cross idol; Livia could feel its hateful, bruising presence even from the other side of the hall.
And finally, secured by a chain to the captain’s belt, came a hunched, misshapen figure.
“What?!” Springing to her feet, Livia whirled on the master. He had the grace to look ashamed. “Renard?! And Clauneck? You didn’t kill them?!”
“I was barely alive myself!” snapped Sebastian. “I escaped, I took what I could find and I fled!”
Behind them, the sorcerer Prelati snarled as he struggled to his feet.
From his robes he produced a long knife and a globe of quicksilver.
The latter he cast into the group of oncoming guardsmen.
It exploded with a wet, heavy boom, dismembering some and blinding others.
Then he sliced the knife across the palms of his hands, smearing his face with the blood and invoking a terrible name.
3 Filled with unholy strength, he discarded the blade and tore at his assailants with his bare hands.
The white-haired Captain Renard strode forward into the chaos, yanking Clauneck behind him. The demon had become a lumpy, inhuman thing, barely contained by the shapeless dress and cloak. She seemed defeated, her face turned to the ground and her hair hanging in ragged clumps.
The captain’s strange golden eyes found them. His face was suddenly transfigured in victory, and Livia thought she might swoon from her desire for him. “Yes! Sebastian Grave—I have come for you!” he exulted. Above him, immaterial jeweled wings unfurled in the sign of the Archangel.
Again, Livia was assailed by a wave of male lust; Captain Renard was extremely glad to see them. She whimpered as an exquisite tingling began to climb her tail.
“You used my own demon to find me? Captain, this is why you should never take Arcane advice from an angel.” Smiling, Sebastian rose to his feet. “Clauneck—attend!”
The miserable creature gave a helpless moan and raised her face to look at them. Sebastian breathed a low, vile curse.
“See your ungodly work undone, witch!” called Renard. The light of the Archangel intensified around him, shining painfully from the silver cross. “I have broken your hold on her, and she serves the Almighty now!”
The coin in Clauneck’s forehead was gone, leaving a round, red welt in its place. The demon’s eyes were huge and utterly dark, their golden glitter all but extinguished.
“He’s Unshackled her,” the master murmured, disbelieving. “What kind of idiot—”
“What kind of idiot didn’t dismiss her?” Livia demanded. “She must be feral by now!”
Clauneck, attend! You know who I am. Do not dare disobey! The old one’s voice crackled with the menace of the Rift.
Clauneck simply hunched where she stood.
But now something else had attracted the abomination’s attention. Clauneck’s wide mouth fell open. She drew deep breaths and then let out a bellow of naked, desperate desire.
“GOLD!”
Clauneck’s black gaze alighted on the pile of riches in the center of the room, now blazing with crimson fire. Heedless of her manacles and of the colossal figure coalescing in the smoke, she heaved herself toward the conflagration with inhuman strength.
Captain Renard was dragged from his feet with a startled cry as the demon’s chain snapped taut and broke. The silver cross was jarred from his hand, and he was suddenly defenseless.
Livia felt the last of her self-control fall away like old skin.
In its place settled single-minded clarity.
She faintly registered the rampaging abomination in the Circle, shoving great fistfuls of burning treasure into its bag-like mouth.
Not far away was the blood-smeared horror of Prelati, tearing apart a guardsman with his hands and teeth.
And closer still was the master with his crackling sword, now beset by five of Renard’s men—difficult odds even with the old one’s help.
But it all seemed so unimportant as she beheld Captain Renard, exposed and winded on the ground.
With a moan, she launched herself across the room, gliding improbably through the altered air. Her glamers struck the captain in an overwhelming torrent, and he gasped at his sudden, painful arousal.
“My darling!” Livia landed atop him and kissed him deeply, piercing his lips with her fangs. “Do you want me?” she whispered in his ear, smiling wickedly.
The captain was beyond speech. He nodded slowly, with tears in his eyes.
Faintly, somewhere in the distance, Livia could hear someone shouting her name, yelling strange words like “half-breed” and “Archangel” and “Scathing.” Her earlobes tingled with the phantom presence of the Shackles.
But she was utterly lost in the warmth of the man between her thighs and the limpid devotion in his beautiful golden eyes.
She tore Renard’s clothes open with two powerful swipes. They cried out together as she impaled herself on his aching member.
And then . . . and then it was just the two of them, joined as one, in a liquid, writhing, golden cocoon that smelled of sweat and roses and sulfur.
It lasted only a few seconds.4 Livia felt the captain’s anima quicken and change, igniting with pleasure. He burst into crippling ecstasy that poured into her, and then she too was afire.
She caressed his handsome face as it began to shrink and tighten, frozen forever in his final grimace of pleasure. His body shriveled beneath her until it was little but bones and feathery chaff, crowned with a tuft of striking white hair.
“Yes, my darling,” she murmured. “Oh, how you love me.”
And then the world came thundering back down around her. The voices in the room seemed all to be screaming at once.
“Get off him, Livia!”
You have defied me for the last time, succubus!
“Come, Barron!”
“My lady Jehanne! Where are you?!”
And then over them all rose an enraged, primeval roar.
“GOLD!”
A nightmarish, hulking thing burst through the pile of riches. The Madman’s fortune pelted the walls as Clauneck’s uncontrolled flesh convulsed through its final transformation. Gilles de Rais was thrown from the Circle, and with him the bone-handled rapier.
Above them, the figure in the smoke faltered. The world slipped, and then slipped again, subsiding back toward its natural locus.
“No!” Prelati snarled, breaking a man over his knee like a dry branch. He lunged after the rapier. “Gilles—my love, quickly! The relic! Before he—before the Maiden is lost to us!”
But Gilles de Rais was defeated. He lay on the ground, his eyes streaming in silent suffering. He did not resist as Renard’s men secured him with chains and began to drag him toward the hole in the wall, their voices raised in desperate prayer.
Clauneck’s rags fell away as she rose, monstrous, over the smoldering pile. Like a gargantuan gray toad she squatted, her swollen abdomen covered in a multitude of gulping mouths. A dozen limbs scooped coins into her insatiable gullet, and every mouth screamed, “GOLD! GOLD!”
Sebastian, the Olympian is fading! Invoke the Table! The old one was shrill with desperation. Half-breed! Get the relic!
Livia stood up, feeling the room groan as the laws of the material world were reinstated. It was not a gentle transition. The walls around them made a terrible dry snapping sound and were suddenly mapped with cracks.
“Meatbag, he’s gone!” she said. Energized from her meal, she was quick and strong, dispatching the master’s assailants with her talons. “We’ll never get him back now! It’s time to go.”
BE SILENT! boomed the old one. We cannot leave! Sebastian, find the relic and return it to the Circle! Throw in the succubus too! Avstamet can still be raised!
The back corner of the room collapsed with a sound like thunder.
Go! I will protect us!
“No, you won’t!” Livia stepped in front of Sebastian, taking his face in her hands. “Look at me! Dominus!” Tentatively, gently, without fangs or glamers, she leaned forward and gave him the kiss he had denied himself earlier.
“This is certain death, meatbag. You know it is,” she said. He looked at her with wide eyes and nodded.
“I’m sorry, my love,” he said to the old one. “If we stay, we will all die. Come, Livia.”
No! NO! the old one screamed. He clawed ineffectually at the walls, trying to drag the master back toward the Circle. The great presence over the flames was a bare shadow now, but it was watching them with a terrible hatred. Barron—Avstamet! I am coming back for you!
The old one’s howling was enough to draw even Clauneck’s attention. The abomination looked up with her huge eyes, now completely filled with gold. Heedless of the crimson flames consuming her hide, she settled like a hen on the remaining riches.
Finally satisfied, she watched them flee as the great hall crashed down around her.
1. I cannot nourish myself by gobbling up hearts or released anima, just as I cannot draw sustenance from money (Clauneck), or fear (Kali), or stupidity (the Almighty), or any number of other mortal preoccupations.
Succubi were created to exploit anima in a very specific, very powerful phase: the orgasm.
I am quite literally made for it, and nothing else will do.
2. It is di?cult to express just how many basic Arcane rules of self-preservation and common sense the Baron de Rais broke in those few steps. If you are ever dealing with a practitioner who encourages you to position yourself inside the Circle of Offerings, get your money back.
3. Which you are better off not knowing. Using your own blood to attract a Spirit is a zero-sum game—this sort of parasite will be helpful to you only in the very, very short term.
4. No surprises there.