Oathbreaker ch 9.23 - Hell Wept (Patreon)

There is little sense of time in the Abyss. In places it can stretch, or compress, a moment becoming a century or an age collapsing into mere weeks. There are storms that hold dreams of worlds that have died, and they can sweep souls up to play out their old tragedies time and time again. Some demons rule these nightmare realms and play hedonistic games with the lost souls inside of them.

I am guilty of this as well, if we must keep a tally of my sins.

In Enkarsura, time was as the Red Bloom wished it to be, and she stretched that cord taut. It became clear to many that the archdemon anticipated something she did not wish to pass, as she retreated into the smaller issues of her kingdom, often seeming not to look even beyond the walls of the Carnelian Palace. I believe centuries might have passed beyond the time I was revived by the Tithe’s crew, but I barely kept track. I delved into my studies and my auguries, into the petty intrigues of the Hells and the dark indulgences of the succubi. I mentored my understudy and considered my place in existence.

In the higher planes, kingdoms rose and fell and the ages turned. There were rumors, always rumors, but news of the battles for the heavenly realms came less frequently.

But whatever was occurring in the realities above could not be ignored forever, and if there is anything that motivates the Queen of Succubi into action, it is the potential that the monstrous family of her own manufacture might be threatened. I spent much of that age of my eternity enacting my dark lady’s will.

My victory over the Ivorine caused a stir, which inevitably created a story. I went from the apostate brought back into the fold during one of the Red Bloom’s charitable moods to a known name and a notable one. The extra responsibilities, and dangers, made for a distraction from my era of depression, if not a cure for it, and soon enough I all but forgot about Rot Voraag. Many tried to destroy or discredit me as my renown grew, and I hurled myself into those brutal intrigues, which only further colored my reputation. Soon my only true rival was Eshirrie, who considered me an irritant and an upstart, though I think she also held a sisterly fondness for me.

It amuses me to think so, anyway.

I wasn’t made a handmaiden — the inner circle would never forget that I’d abandoned the fold and tried to steal my own power in the era of our great victory over the God-Tyrant — but I became a personal scribe to the Red Bloom, and in time something near a confidant. I cannot say why she brought me into her company more often over time, though I think it might have had something to do with my confession of my most recent experience in the mortal world. She seemed to understand my feelings, even empathize with them.

But then, she was the greatest of seducers. Who knows what was true, or just what I wanted to believe? There were rumors about her past, and of the nature of the trespass the Almoner committed against her. I wasn’t certain of anything.

Nilmarin tried to pursue a romance with her corsair despite my warnings. It ended badly, as I’d known it would, and in the end her infatuation with the captain — and the legend behind him — twisted into a deep and abiding hatred.

Evil mirrored cannot become love, for the reflection is ugly both ways. I’d learned that lesson with Didikas. The other succubi stoked the neophyte’s vengeful feelings with glee. My curious, romantically inclined understudy became just as vicious and bitter as the rest of us.

That, I also mark among my sins.

The Margravine called me into her chambers, and I’d barely let the doors close at my back when she began to speak.

“I have a something to inquire of you, Shyora.”

I paused and waited for the crystal to fully form over the wall behind me, using the time to find my balance. “I am at your service, Your Glory.”

“Are you?”

I hesitated. “Your Glory?”

The Margravine’s wings flexed in clear agitation. The room felt overly dry and hot. Beyond the windows, the broken skies roiled with lightning in strange colors.

The Harlot Princess of the Drossian Sea was angry. I felt a thrill of terror and excitement at the realization.

“You were one of my most promising scribes before the war,” she said in an oddly brittle voice. “Then you abandoned me during a time I could have used more thinkers than fighters. I know you tried to betray me in Rot Voraag. Did you not think I had eyes and ears in a city ruled by Exalted Eibon?”

When I am afraid, or angry, I do not flinch or fidget. I become perfectly still. I did so then.

The Margravine began to pace. I realized we were not alone in the room. Eshirrie was there, waiting off in the wings, and that other one I’d met during my first day in the city. The one called Liieshi. The towering chamberlain, Nulpeko, was also lurking in one corner. I became more nervous.

“That was a long time ago, Your Glory.” It was a daring thing to say, but there wasn’t a point trying to deflect. She would not accuse if she wasn’t certain. Besides, it was true.

The scarlet angel paused and turned to glare at me. I withered. That fiery stare wasn’t to be trifled with. “I have a fondness for you, my pernicious one. You are clever and wise. You have done me good service. With the Ivorine, and in the time before the Sack. By all the ages, that feels like so long ago! Yet it hasn’t even been a millennium yet. Part of me expected the tapestry to come apart, and it came close! But we are still here…”

She was rambling. I’d never seen her like this. I glanced at the others, but could not read them. I got the sense from their anxious postures that they’d been listening to this for some time.

The Margravine seemed to calm and let out a sigh. “I would have made you one of my Bloomsisters, but you are too independent. Perhaps that is my fault. I have an indulgent habit. There are events happening in the higher dimensions, things I should have understood the source of. So much has been moving, and I got caught up trying to tame a thing that cannot be tamed!”

I was struggling to follow, but did not dare interrupt. Eshirrie shifted in discomfort.

The Margravine wheeled on me and stepped forward, a stomp of one hoofed foot that made the whole tower shudder. Her voice was terrible, implacable. “Look me in the eye, Shyora, and tell me the truth here and now! If you lie to me, know that you will suffer for it. Did you conceive a child while you were in that wizard’s realm?”

I took a step back. Suddenly, Eshirrie and Liieshi were behind me, providing no escape. The Red Bloom advanced on her cloven hooves, each step a drumbeat of doom, her four wings stretched out and her profanely beautiful form towering high.

“Answer me!” She commanded in a voice that made the very shadows in the tower roil like flames. “Did you carry a mortal man’s child? Did you bear it into that place?!”

“No,” I said in a small voice. “I did not, my lady, I swear it to you!”

Several faces flashed through my mind. Didikas. Narahn. Fell. None of them won that favor from me, but they might have had things gone differently. There were times I fantasized about it.

“She’s lying,” Nulpeko said with unmasked delight. “I can sense it. She just thought of something, it flickered across the surface of her mind.”

That’s why he’s here, I realized with sudden despair. Nulpeko was a very powerful empath.

The Red Bloom stared at me hard for a long time. I waited for Eshirrie to attack from behind, for her talons to rip into my chest and pluck out my withered heart. Or would the Red Bloom burn me to ash, as she’d done to Perilpetta?

She did not. Instead, she relaxed and folded her wings. “No… she is holding something back, but she does not lie. I can see that much.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I said, though it wasn’t entirely true. I could guess. Better to play at being the frazzled victim. Our queen could be harsh, but she liked to play at motherly tendencies.

“Hush,” she said and placed her warm hands on my trembling shoulders. “It is alright. I had to be sure. There is a creature in that land you visited, a very strong one, and many powers are beginning to take an interest. You have heard of this cambion, yes?”

There were many cambions, but she could only be referring to one. Still feeling more than a little shaken, I nodded. “The one said to be our master?”

The other succubi reflected my skepticism. The Red Bloom only looked tired, which I wasn’t used to seeing. Her color seemed diminished, more a crimson shadow than a scarlet goddess.

“Yes,” she said. “That is the rumor, though I have my doubts. I’ve had factors keeping an eye on the half-breed ever since the Almoner brought the matter to my attention. He’s been active in the mortal plane for about a century now, on the same continent as the one you visited. He began small, but has grown in strength over that time. Strong enough to challenge Eibon, who is presumed dead. There is a new king in the Exalted’s city now, one who is growing in strength every year.”

I’d not thought to hear of the Exalted or his miserable city again, much less in regard to his death and usurpation. The accusation of my involvement made sudden sense.

Had she not believed me, I would have suffered a far worse fate than mere destruction.

“It might even have the spark of divinity in it,” the Red Bloom continued. “If it’s kindled, it could become another fracture. A very dangerous one.”

“You speak of the New Gods?” I asked.

Those broken echoes had been appearing like flies over a pile of manure in recent centuries. None of them had the power of the old All King, but they were divinities. There were conditions on how they manifested, and repercussions. The Red Bloom had me and the other scribes working tirelessly to discover more.

We knew some things. For one, each and every one of these new deities did not begin as such. Rogue seraphim we hadn’t managed to imprison or destroy were making them somehow, like gardeners tending to divine weeds.

They were not all allies to one another — indeed, they bickered worse than any two demons — but we were losing ground to them. Each new splinter turned the scales. And if a splinter attuned to our axis emerged…

We hadn’t won the war for the soul of Creation. Some now sought a champion to lead our side to a final victory. Many once believed that was the Gatebreaker, but Ager Roth had failed to hold the Silver City against the New Gods. Even now he warred against them in an ongoing struggle which had endured through centuries. Enkarsura fed troops to that conflict, but it had become more a symbolic tribute than any true commitment. Orkael had waxed since Onsolem waned, and we were all more interested in keeping out of the Zosites’ fetters.

It was a growing belief that our lord might match these new powers, and be of mixed earthly and divine blood. So this so called Cambion King, and all the fuss about them.

“If this half-breed ascends to godhood,” I said slowly, calming as I worked it out, “then it could very well mean they are the one?”

“The heir of the Abyssal Kingdom,” the Red Bloom confirmed. “And if the legends are true, then He will command all the Abgrûdai. Including us.”

No wonder she was so enraged at the idea that I might be the mother.

Eshirrie, always loyal, hissed in anger and insisted, “We serve no god but you, Your Glory.”

The Red Bloom tutted and lifted her favorite’s chin with one red finger. “I am no god, love. That is one thing He denied us, in the beginning. I may play pretend, but I cannot pull the levers. These new deities can. They grow more powerful with every passing century. That wicked old owl planned this, I know it.”

She withdrew from us and went back to the windows. “Lamash believes it is true. He is trying to kill this dark lord before he can come into his full power.”

“Why?” I asked. I recalled the Almoner’s words, his disdain for my kind, but I’d never received a true explanation. He’d departed Enkarsura not long after arriving, and I’d heard little but rumor since.

“Redemption.” The Margravine scoffed. “He was never a true rebel. Even I only heeded Ager Roth’s call because I knew which direction the wind was blowing.” She used the Gatebreaker’s Kandaric name, rather than his angelic one. “Lamash sees what is becoming of our creator’s world and regrets. He believes that by hamstringing the prophecy, he can turn the equilibrium back towards the light and redeem his own part in its dimming. Or so I think, because I know him. It’s why he fishes the Dross. He thinks he can find souls worth redeeming. Trouble is, he can’t look past the dirt on the pearl and keeps tossing them back, all the while not noticing how stained his own fingers are…”

She trailed off a while, lost in her own thoughts. The chamberlain projected some thought at its mistress — I felt it, though I did not intercept it — and the Red Bloom nodded thoughtfully, her mood dark and withdrawn.

“The demon who sired this mongrel must be found,” Eshirrie insisted. She was still looking at me as she said it, her crimson eyes agleam. “You played with no mortals while above, Pernicious?”

“I let none of them quicken me,” I snapped. “I made but one Woed.”

Eshirrie was not convinced. “You might have taken a male form and played the incubus. We should question her more thoroughly, Your Glory.”

“Peace,” the Red Bloom said. Her champion settled, if reluctantly. The Queen of Succubi regarded me with a bemused expression, her full lips pursed. Liieshi and the unnamed demon stood silent. After a period of thought she said, “We will have proof of her honesty. Eshirrie, Liieshi, I want the demon who sired this cambion found. Bring them to me, along with proof.”

They both bowed.

I hesitated, then decided that daring was necessary here. “Allow me to accompany them, and—”

“No.” The Red Bloom’s voice was quiet, but firm enough that I clamped my teeth shut. “I have another task for you, my pernicious one. You will go to the Ivorine. The last ambassador I sent is struggling, and you know their ways better than many in the palace.”

Exile. She wanted me out of the way. I formed a protest, let it die on my tongue and bowed. “If that is your will, Your Glory.”

“It is. Now leave us. Your sisters must work to clean up the mess in the worlds above.”

The one you may have left me, she did not say. I felt bitter and persecuted, but also knew I’d brought much of this on myself. My apostasy in Rot Voraag. The fact I’d been brought before the Red Bloom by her old enemy. Forcing myself into that business with the Ivorine.

That was an unwise act. Calculated at the time, a gamble meant to increase my standing. The expected and laudable thing to do within our duplicitous society. But I’d miscalculated how unpopular I was with the Bloom’s followers, how suspicious they all were of me. In retrospect, it all looked like the actions of an ambitious rogue. Trouble was, I’d been that.

And now this mongrel demigod in Rot Voraag. Who was the parent? I’d known of no other Abgrûdai there with the means to create such a monster.

I left the Margravine’s presence. A palace minister found me and gave me instructions to find passage on a barge that would take me to the edge of the Whist. Succubi gossiped behind their wings as I passed. Gangs of dretches showed me their bulging teeth and cackled at my back. The whole palace seemed to watch me with countless hungry eyes as word spread and Enkarsura’s demons scented my weakness.

How quickly we can tumble, I thought.

Something followed me. It made no secret of it, but neither did it let me catch sight of it. I glared at every shadow. It was starting even quicker than I’d anticipated.

Nilmarin found me near the gates. “What’s going on?” She asked me in a hushed voice. “Everyone’s talking about you.”

“How flattering,” I said dryly. My understudy had changed since the Battle of Bedlam. Her corsair had mocked her appearance, called her a flayed doxy. She’d grown real hair since, bright crimson like the Red Bloom’s, and looked more human and classically pretty. I preferred her old look, though I hadn’t the heart to tell her.

I hadn’t stopped walking, and Nilmarin had to flutter her wings and take hopping steps to keep up. “Shyora, I’m worried!”

“You shouldn’t be near me,” I said, then hissed at a cacodemon that drew too close. The lesser demons weren’t yet so bold as to not be afraid of me. The toothy thing retreated, transitioning from its natural form to that of a bloated child with flies buzzing out of its mouth, gibbering curses.

Nilmarin knew something bad was happening. She retreated a step, but didn’t stop following me.

The lonely thing idolized me, I knew. She’d heard stories, and knew I’d fought during the Sack, laid eyes on the Throne. I’d helped her with her wings when any other demon in the palace would have maimed her further just to take joy in her despair. She was my only true ally at court.

Perhaps she might prove useful yet…

No. I decided against it. If I used her, she would suffer for it when I was gone. She might anyway.

Strange. The old me wouldn’t have hesitated, or cared. Perhaps it was because she reminded me of someone. Whatever it was, I stopped and wheeled on her. I was still being followed, but there were no demons in sight just then.

“Listen, Nilmarin.” I put my hands on her shoulders, just as the Red Bloom had done to me barely half an hour before. “I’m going to be leaving for a while. I don’t know when or if I’ll be back, but you need to do something. It’s very important.”

She watched me with wide, forlorn eyes. Her eyes were another thing her corsair hadn’t fancied, and she’d tried to change them for his sake. She must have read about “doe eyes” in one of her romances, because that’s what she’d gone for, only she took the description literally. Her eyes were huge and brown-black, glassy orbs like an animal’s.

“I have fallen out of the Red Bloom’s favor,” I said, and she gaped at me. “She’s exiled me to the Ivorine. I don’t have time to explain, but you need to do something if you’re going to survive.”

“I’ll gather some chattel to transport our research” the younger succubus told me. “Just give me a few hours.”

I smiled. “You aren’t going with me, thornflower.”

“But—”

I silenced her by pressing our foreheads together, pressing into the space between her horns and forcing her to look directly into my eyes. “I will never reach the Ivorine.”

She was confused. She voiced some protest, one I didn’t remember later. The palace demons were closing in. The halls were too quiet. I didn’t have time, and yet…

All the years I’d been in the Abyss after Didikas took revenge on me, this one thing I recalled with fondness. I’d been there when they pulled Nilmarin out of the Dross. She’d been such a damp, ugly thing. I expected her to pupate into a hideous caco or some other dreg. The day she’d looked up at me with my own face and giggled, I’d smiled and not faked it. I’d pulled her wings from her swollen back and taught her how to use them. I’d held her after that tar-eyed human made sport of her in front of his men, listened to a demon weep.

I’d named her. My Nilmarin. My thornflower. My little sister. No god or angel would look on her without disgust, but she was proof that not all born from this hideous place need be hideous at heart.

But I couldn’t shield her anymore. There was only one way to keep the others from preying on her to punish me. I just didn’t want to do it.

But I needed to.

I tightened my grip on her hard enough that she winced, and forced my face into a mask of rage. “You treacherous little slut!”

Her black eyes widened even further in shock, but I didn’t give her time to wonder. My left hand lashed out, nails raking across her neck and jaw. Her fiery blood sizzled against the carnelian stone of a nearby wall.

“All I’ve done for you, and this is the thanks I get?! Disloyal cur!”

I let my voice boom loud so it echoed far, making sure our stalkers heard it. Nilmarin reeled back, off balance, as she brought a hand up to the wounds on her jaw. She started to say something, but I ignored it. My tail hissed, coiled and lashed out. I didn’t bother trying to miss. This needed to look real. To be real.

The other succubus dodged my strike and jumped back, putting distance between us and using her wings as shields, so I looked at her vulnerable human shape and horrified expression through a leathery window.

Good. I’d trained her how to fight too, and my lessons had become reflex. She was angry, bordering on enraged. Again she demanded an explanation, but I didn’t give her the chance to debate with me. I angled myself and made a shield of my right wing, showing as little of my body as possible without losing sight of her.

We circled a moment. With my wing providing cover, she couldn’t see my tail. She wasn’t stupid and knew my tricks. Her eyes searched for the serpent, trying to predict the angle of attack. A furious crease had appeared at the center of her brow.

“You were the one who told them, weren’t you?” I made my voice a seething hiss. “Feckless viper. I should have known better than to trust you.”

No one in the palace knew what had passed between me and the Red Bloom besides those who’d been in the parlor earlier. None but the queen herself knew what I’d confided after the Almoner brought me to court. I wanted as many to hear this as possible.

“What is this?” Nilmarin demanded. Tears of blood were forming in her eyes. “What did I do wrong?!”

Her voice was pathetic, a piteous mewl. I needed to break that weakness before I left.

“I’ll rip out your heart before I go.” I struck, twisting so my left shoulder went from facing away from Nilmarin to aimed at her. She opened her wings to jump back, having gauged the distance my tail could reach.

But I didn’t strike with my tail. My left wing, previously hidden behind the right, unfolded with a snap of motion. The claw at the terminus of the outer joint punched forward like a spear, into Nilmarin’s shoulder. She let out a scream of pain. I moved forward, forcing her back, then down as she lost her footing. I stood over her, the nail of my wing digging into her shoulder and pinning her to the floor.

We had an audience. The Red Bloom’s demons didn’t move to interfere. They were enjoying the show. Brawls were common in the palace.

I kept my attention on Nilmarin, making my face a hard mask as she writhed and beat at me with her wings without effect. It wasn’t difficult, didn’t need to be faked. I felt less than jocund.

“I should have drowned you in the Dross,” I hissed down at the struggling succubus. “Saved myself the trouble. Any dretch could have made a decent minion. At least then I wouldn’t have to listen to your drivel.”

She was crying in earnest now, red tears streaking her cheeks, but she’d also become truly angry. Her glossy black doe eyes flashed, turned a glowing red.

Good, I thought, feeling miserable. Let it out. Hurt me back.

She did. With a scream, the demoness erupted into a small nova of sickly red fire, like combusting blood. Those flames bit at me, forcing me back now. I threw an arm over my face to shield my eyes and prevent blinding.

This wasn’t just a shroud of flames. She’d changed completely, become a thing of fire and blood and anger. A burning hand reached for my throat, and I wasn’t quick enough to react. Nilmarin caught me. Fingers hot as forge metal dug into my throat.

We struggled. Our wings beat together. My serpent tail lashed. Nilmarin roared like a heartbroken inferno. I had to change shape too, became a centipede, and when still she wouldn’t let go I became a swarm of snakes, unpeeling into a pile of slithering, hissing shapes that could not all be grasped at once.

Nilmarin became a horned thing, cloven-hoofed, all fire and scarlet hate with arms thick enough to pulverize stone. She almost managed to burn every fragment, but I managed to pull enough together to reform. I turned into a similar spirit-form, mine ash and shadow, hungry cold to her inferno. Her fire withered.

She needed to fight harder. To hate me more.

“Why don’t you run back to your mercenary and cry on his shoulder?” My spirit-form cackled. “He felt badly for turning you out, you know. Told me so himself that same night while we lay together. Of course, I asked him to. I never liked sharing as much as you did, thornflower.”

A lie, of course, but I knew the arts of cruelty well. Nilmarin withered further, a despairing moan emerging from the flames. Then she erupted and hurled herself at me. I spread my wings and tried to dodge, but it came on too fast.

The screaming comet hit me hard enough that we both went flying back, blasting through a red-glass window and out beyond the palace walls. Enkarsura and the black sea yawned beneath us. Bleak mountains on the horizon. Overlooks to bottomless pits dropping into fathomless darkness.

Hateful lightning. Damned souls keening. Red rain falling.

Our home. The place which made us.

Nilmarin had her blood from me. Her hate burned so hot and her bloodlust so sharp that it formed a blade that drilled its way through my core, made a wound in my spirit. It was more than I bargained for, and no less than I deserved.

With a shriek that shamed the tongues of abyssal lightning crackling about the carnelian towers, I struck her with a whip of lightning. Nilmarin let out a scream of pain and fell into the blood-soaked cliffs beneath the palace. She struck the rock like a falling comet and burned a hole through it, left a smoking crater that glowed like the very gaols of the Iron Hell.

She was too enraged for that to stop her long. I’d done my work. The palace would respect the one who’d wounded the infamous Tormentsister. They would know we were no allies.

Damn it damn it damn it damn it why are you like this why do you ruin everything everyone you touch venomous snake wretched worm it should be you down there you burning screaming weeping alone alone alone alone again—

Calm. I needed calm.

I spread my black wings wide, turned my back on the glowing crater, and fled the realm of the succubi.