Author's Preface
Merkra: We can save the next bit for the next episode if you’re not feeling up for it.
Solana: No…No. I’ll be fine. You’ve done most of the research on this, anyway.
Merkra: Yeah, and you called it embellishment. Which I did have to look up to figure out what it even meant.
Solana: muffled snort of laughter No you didn’t.
Merkra: I did, and I’ll have you know, that’s horseshit. Every story beat I’m about it hit has solid footing.
Solana: I disagree. What we know is that two Gifted walked into a cultist camp and one walked out. There is some evidence of the…
Merkra: Don’t give it away! You’re going to ruin the surprise for the listeners.
Solana: You can be such a child sometimes. Content warning for everyone out there. This is going to get very dark very fast.
Merkra: That’s probably a good idea. It does get a little grotesque. Should have considered that. If you’re listening to this with your kids…I don’t know, cover their ears or something.
Solana: In all seriousness, discretion advised…and if I am being honest, it is not going to get any more carefree.
Benicio had been all but silent since their trek began. A few grumbles while he fidgeted with the leather that had become too tight across his chest, and a word or two of direction when she’d almost turned the wrong direction to get to the mountain pass. In his defense, Atania hadn’t tried to talk to him. Perhaps she’d been overreacting, but every time she made eye contact with the burning coals in his head, her stomach roiled.
The sun was setting against the Floitheim mountains when Benicio pulled back on the reins of his horse and held a hand up for her to stop. His head didn’t move, but the flickering light from his eyes told her he was scanning for something.
“What is it?” Atania stopped her horse by his side.
“This mine is supposed to be abandoned?”
“That’s what Penelope said.” Atania nodded.
There was a long pause, and Benicio sniffed at the air. “She lied.” He said flatly. “We go on foot from here. Gonna be a long walk back if we lose the horses.”
Atania tied her horse to a nearby tree, leaving a bag of oats open between the two animals before joining Benicio on what passed for a road out here. The closer they got to the mountains, the more imposing nature got. Trees stood hundreds of feet high, the river beside the dirt road they traveled turned to rocky rapids, and evidence of large predators was everywhere, though aside from a few birds there was suspiciously little to no visible wildlife.
Maybe a quarter-mile from the mine entrance, her heightened senses caught what Benicio had apparently smelled miles back. At the base of the mountain, she could hear what sounded like a collection of farm animals and the occasional humanoid voice.
“Are we just going to walk…” She stopped when Benicio turned from solid to a blur of motion. He vanished into the treeline beside the road and emerged seconds later with two full-grown men’s throats in his hands. Their feet kicked at him, fingers digging into forearms that suddenly lit with brilliant white flame.
“Lookouts.” He grunted as their shirts and cloaks caught fire around his hands.
“Maybe drop them?” Atania suggest as she moved to his side. “A couple dead Nulls don’t help us, but they might have information.”
Benicio glanced over at her, seemed to ponder it for a moment, then tightened the grip of one of his hands. Atania didn’t place much faith in the gods, but she did silently thank Nareis that the men had masks on. The throat in his left hand collapsed with a wet snap, the man’s limbs went rigid for a split second before going limp. He dropped the second man who tried to scream and scramble away, but his lungs wouldn’t allow it.
Atania dropped beside him, ripping off the cloak and mask and slapping a hand over his mouth before patting out the flames on his shirt.
“What the fuck?” She snapped up at Benicio, who dropped the now corpse to the floor beside the panicking human under her.
“We don’t need them both to talk, do we?” He gave a nonchalant shrug then turned to face the camp.
Atania took a sharp breath before looking down at the survivor. The flesh at his throat and cheeks bubbled with flame-ruined skin, and his eyes darted back and forth.
“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth and ask you a couple questions, then I’ll help you with the burns and send you on your way, okay?” His nod was vigorous under her grip. “If you call out, or try anything stupid, I’ll cut your throat before you can get out a second syllable.” She lifted her hand from his mouth, and her fingers twitched around Ember’s hilt, but to his credit the young human didn’t make a sound.
“Ask him what they’re doing out here.” Benicio said without turning toward her.
She glared at him from the corner of her eye, but focused on the man again. “How many of you are there?”
“T-twenty I think.” He stuttered, a faint smell of piss filling the air.
“Good, what are you doing out here?”
“Patrolling.” He answered, which drew an irritated sigh from her companion.
“Not you specifically.” Atania clarified. “What is your group doing out here?”
His eyes went wide and darted around again as if looking for some means of escape. “I-I shouldn’t say.”
Atania closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t want to hurt you.” She lifted Ember from its sheath and pressed the cool blade to his throat with blinding speed. “But I will. Talk.”
The bulge in his throat twitched as he swallowed hard. “W-we’re tending to the M-mother. Bringing h-her back to life.”
“Who’s the mother?” Atania’s brow furrowed.
“This is incredibly boring. I’m going ahead.” Benicio said, clearly less curious as to what the man had to say than she.
Atania stared at him as he strolled down the dirt road as if he had not just crushed a man’s neck with one hand. She gnawed at the inside of her lip before looking back down at the man. “The mother. Speak.”
“Rauth, The Mother Below. She’s come back to save us. Please…just let me go.”
“Lunatic cultists. Got it.” She rolled her eyes. Just what she needed. Benicio teetering on the edge, stomping through an encampment of fanatics. She pulled out a clump of moss from a pouch on her belt and pushed it into his hands. “Sunveil moss. Chew up up, rub the paste on the burns.” She lifted off him, snagged his mask, then hurried off to catch up with Benicio.
“Anything interesting?” he asked, not bothering to look back at her.
“Besides your unnecessary violence?” She asked, watching him closely, but he gave no reaction to the question. “Seems like a bunch of lunatics. They think they’ve found the physical resurrection of The Warden Below.”
“Hmm.” Was all she got from him as they approached the encampment.
“I really don’t want to massacre a camp full of Nulls. Any chance you can tone down the violence a bit?” Atania almost reached out to grab him to make him pay attention to her, but thought better of it. She needed to keep him from pushing too hard, or he’d become the next blooded Deviltouched… and she wasn’t sure how she would handle that.
“Bold to assume none of them are Deviltouched.” He said, shrugging. “I suppose if they just let us walk in, we don’t need to kill them all.”
“Or, wild thought, but go with me here.” Atania narrowed her gaze at him. “We could sneak in.” The trees were closing in on the road. Ahead, a few hundred yards, a makeshift gate blocked the road leading up to the base of the mountain.
Benicio finally glanced back at her, coal-like eyes sending eerie shadows dancing across his chiseled features. “If you think that’s best, Tani.”
She couldn’t be sure if the use of an old pet name was his humanity reaching out to her, or this strange devilish perversion’s manipulation. If it was the latter, it was working as she relaxed enough to reach out and take his hand to pull him off the road and into the thick underbrush between the trees.
They circled the poorly fenced area. Once it was a mining station, but the buildings that had stood here hundreds of years ago had reduced to rubble, their ruins being used to hold up makeshift tents and pen in animals. Too many animals for such a small area. The smell as Atania led Benny through a gap in the fence was enough to bring tears to her eyes. Little wonder they were wearing masks.
Atania slipped under the canvas wall of the closest tent and froze. Two feet to her left, a young woman slept soundly in a cot. On the floor beside her was her neatly folded cloak, mask set on top of it.
“Well, this is awkward.” Benicio said, standing up between her and the woman after sliding beneath the tent wall. The woman stirred at the sound of his voice, and before she could react Benicio brought a fist down into her face.
Atania took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Seriously?” she whispered.
“What? She’ll be fine.” He bent down and grabbed the mask and cloak from the floor. “Free mask.”
From what she could glean, the estimate the man she’d freed had given was roughly correct. They meandered through the camp cloaked, masked, and as casually as possible. She counted eighteen people. There was no telling how many were in the tunnels below the mountain.
Atania’s stomach roiled as they passed by the animal pen. The makeshift barriers could not have been more than twenty by ten feet. Two cows, a horse, and numerous pigs and goats were practically stacked on top of each other. The space was simply unsustainable, not to mention there were far too many animals here for twenty people to eat.
A couple of the cultists gave them lingering looks, but no one stopped them until they reached the mouth of the mine. A masked dwarf, sitting on a stool and leaning back against the rock, waved at them dismissively.
“Feeders only, y’know the rules.”
“Heard somethin’ inside, thought we did.” Benicio mimicked his accent without missing a beat.
“Heard somethin’, did ya now?” The dwarf turned slightly on the stool, tipping it to the side and leaning as if getting closer to the gaping entrance would reveal the mysterious sound.
“Aye,” Benicio nodded toward the entrance. “Like a neck snappin’, it was.”
“A neck snappin’, ye say? I d…” the dwarf started to shake his head, but Benicio quickly scanned the area, then reached out and shook it for him. Once. Violently.
“Problem solved.” Benicio said, arranging the limp limbs in a napping position as if he’d just created a strategically placed scarecrow.
It wasn’t as if Atania had not seen death, or even doled it out with her own hand. The macabre ease with which Benicio turned it on and off was what shook her. She shook her head slightly and took in a deep breath. “Let’s just go before someone notices his head doesn’t quite stand up on its own anymore.”
The sound of their boots hitting the boards and metal mine cart rails mingled with the subtle dripping of water falling from stalactites. The smell of rotting wood and rusted iron took the place of the animal scat. Atania reached up to the brand on her neck. It turning a soft violet for a moment before fading along with the sound of their steps. Perhaps a useless precaution considering her companions’ propensity for violence, but one she took anyway.
It did not take long for the mine to swallow the light from its mouth, plunging them into utter darkness. Atania herself didn’t have an issue with it. The world simply turned to shades of gray. Benicio had never had that talent, and yet he seemed as surefooted as ever.
As they pushed deeper into the tunnel, the character of the mine changed. The expected signs of abandonment were there. A turned over mine cart, a pickaxe resting against the rock wall, but stranger things accompanied them. The tunnel widened in places, not from excavation, but as if something immense had carved the walls smooth and left behind long arcing cuts in the rock. The chill receded gradually, replaced by an uncanny dry heat.
“We’ve got company.” Benicio’s voice was so low she’d almost missed it. Then she heard the quiet murmur of conversation ahead where the tunnel took a sudden sharp turn.
“She doesn’t want the damn cow. She wants something else.” A voice bounced along the walls as it made its way to them.
“We got pigs, goats, and cows. Could give her the horse I guess, but it’s gonna take longer to get her more food if we do that.” Another voice argued.
Atania’s feet ground to a halt at the corner, and she dipped her head around to clock the source of the two voices.
“Well, fuck me…” Benicio’s all but imperceptible voice sounded again.
Surrounding the two beings in the center of the circular chamber were mountains of treasure. Piles of gold obols, tarnished silver goblets, cut and uncut gems alike, and the glint of polished armor and weaponry reflected torchlight from sconces on the walls. At one time it may have been an ore deposit, but now Atania gawked at a treasure trove.
Her mind raced. These people were living in squalor while hoarding the wealth of nations only a few hundred feet away. Did Penelope know all this was here? How were they supposed to dig through all this to find one stupid orb?
The paralysis her overloaded mind dropped her in meant she barely registered Benicio saunter past her and into the chamber. All she could do was watch as he strutted up to the first pile of gold he came to and dug his hands in. The man and woman in the center of the room each yelled at him, but she’d hardly registered the words. He yanked out a sword with an enormous ruby in the pommel, examined it a moment, then tossed it end over end over his shoulder, narrowly missing his aggressors while not paying them even a passing glance.
Suddenly, she remembered that her legs still worked and took off down the short corridor. The distance wasn’t excessive, but it was just long enough that the two masked people reached Benicio before she did. Thick, knobby fingers landed on his shoulders and made an attempt to yank him back. Benicio didn’t budge.
She slid to a stop as blinding white flame erupted from her companion’s hands. He whirled around, leather vambraces smoking and droplets of molten gold spraying in an arc as he threw actively melting coins at the cultists. Screams echoed through the vast chamber. Their next mistake, however, would prove to be their last. As they ripped their masks off their faces, helplessly trying to get the molten metal off their skin, Benicio gripped their faces in each hand.
Atania could only look on as his long, thin fingers cracked and morphed into something more akin to talons. Benicio’s flames invaded their mouths and noses. He cooked them from the inside out, at one point getting so hot Atania could distinguish red hot skull through their skin. Her fingers gripped Ember’s hilt.
Benicio was gone. She had no evidence, but she was confident that whatever Father did to him had pushed him blooded.
He was gone. Replaced by this demon, who wore his face.
Her brother was gone. She could smell the brains cooking before the corpses fell at his feet, oozing boiling liquid from every orifice.
Gone. The Demon turned its head to her, a wide, perfectly white-toothed smile stretched unnaturally across its face as the lit coals it called eyes drifted to her hip and Ember.
“I hope that’s not for me, Tani.” Beneath his usual timber, a choir of voices echoed her name. He took a step toward her. Even the air recoiled from him, shimmering waves pulsing around his frame. “We have a job to do.”
She retreated only to find her back hitting the wall of the cavern. Pulse racing, struggling to keep a level head, she took in her surroundings. Fighting another Deviltouched to the death was not an ideal situation, though she was confident she could do it. Fighting a blooded Deviltouched, alone, to the death was another situation entirely. Unfortunately, running would not be an option. She was fast, but even before his grotesque transformation, Benicio was faster.
Just as she lifted Ember from its nestled position at her hip, the mine shook. An earthquake? Before she could rationally rule it out, a ghastly sound rang through the room. It was as if someone was trying to shave away solid stone with the edge of a spade. The wicked grin dropped from Benicio’s cheeks, and his head turned to the other side of the cave.
Dirt and rock fell from the ceiling. Deceptively sharp stalactites crashed around them and made the hope of using the sound as a distraction impossible. A taloned hand shot out, snatching a thin spire of pointed rock from the air just over her head and crushing it. Benicio’s focus was not on her, though. A rumbling had emerged from the other side of the echo chamber, mingling with the grating sound of metal scraping against rock.
“I can smell you, devilkin.” The voice flooded the chamber, languid but with the crackling threat of a wildfire beneath it. A shadow emerged from the opposite side, too big for Atania to begin to comprehend. The torchlight revealed flashes of color: green scaled hide, teeth like enormous yellowed greatswords, a single cloudy gray eye.
A dragon. Flesh and blood fucking dragon. These idiot fucking cultists found a dragon, and instead of immediately reporting the beast, treated it like a god. Its head rose, cracks in the scales of its underbelly revealed by glowing orange lines. The beast’s claws dug into the ground as it faced them, proudly displaying the single most valuable item in this mine.
Despite being in a room of treasure within a mine of valuable natural resources, the crystal heart protruding scales in the beast’s chest would be the true boon. A mere fraction of the dragon’s heart could create a horde of artifacts.
“But you can’t see me.” The chorus of voices flowed from Benicio’s mouth. “Interesting.” To her horror, he stepped toward the dragon.
Her eyes flicked to the dragon’s head, then its eyes. Clouded, gray. He was right. It must have been down here for ages, hibernating through the culling of its kind. Then a group of imbeciles came down here hoping to strike it rich and woke up a “God.”
“I suggest you run, little sister.” Benicio didn’t look back at her. He scooped up the sword he’d thrown over his shoulder moments ago, white flame burning away at the remnants of leather covering his arms and torso.
Orange gobbets of fluid seeped from the cracks in the beast’s hide, lighting its throat in threat. “Few delicacies roam the earth more delightful than demon.” Its voice rumbled, sending coins clattering from their piles as the cavern quaked. Its foreclaws dug into the stone, and it lunged forward with an open maw.
“No!” Atania screamed. Her enhanced speed had been just enough to avoid being roasted alive by the stream of flame, but Benicio had not even attempted to move. The fire ripped through the corridor that should have been her exit, but the screams that accompanied it weren’t his. Benicio?
She found her answer when the fire cut abruptly by jaws that snapped shut. Sword buried in the earth as an anchor, Benicio knelt before the dragon. Laughing.