Nicholas’s POV
Banishing to the east. Prayer to the God of ultimate Pleasure and Pain.
Thanateros, your rite has commenced!
He recites: "Unto Thee - the Kingdom - the Power - and the Glory - to the Ages!"
"Amen!"
This ritual is the needed barrier to breach on my path to passing the Abyss of initiation.
I can see nothing. My wrists are tied with leather cuffs to a rack and I can barely stand on my feet. I feel my own hot sweat dripping down my temples and from my nose to the ground. But the room is cold. The room is cold and I am naked, defenseless physically and emotionally. My body is drained so dry and I cannot speak, let alone cry out.
Water.
I need it, desperately.
He has blocked my nose and my eyes. Soon, after he is done teasing me, he'll shut off my ears. His voice feels like a whip across my waist. It comes from the opposite side of my narrow dungeon. I beg him to come closer, to feel the breath of another
Camilla looked at the woman who was standing in front of them. She wore flowing robes which billowed about her body and made her look like an ancient creature but so utterly young which seemed impossible and improbable at the same time but Camilla had now understood that here, in this world anything could happen and she could have died. Instead she was here with a man who was trying to protect her and this woman was looking at her with disdain.“You dare darken my doorstep. Again.”The woman was looking at Percival who looked at her straight ahead and said,” You very well are aware that if it was not very important then I would never come here. And I also know that if someone is in the need of your help or your support then you are never going to push them away. I did not know whose door to knock.”“You know that the witch of strength and potions has suddenly found a lover and she will be busy in creating love spells and all that sh
Brian was forty four years old. He had a plain face and a medium build. His dark hair had been thinning for the last ten years. What remained gave him the appearance of someone at least ten years older than he actually was. Vanity over his looks had never bothered him, neither had the pursuit of fashion. His mind was sharp. He had an above average intelligence. That was his pride. Looks faded with age. Fashion changed far too frequently for his taste and possessions could always be stolen by someone. But his mind, no one could take and no one could touch. He had spent years honing his intellectual skills through regular reading and study on a multitude of subjects.He followed the park path until he came to the spot where he would turn right and begin the ascent up the hill to his hideaway. He paused and looked about. There was no one in sight. The park appeared to be deserted for the moment. He turned right and began to walk up the hill. Again he chose a ziz-zag path to avoi
Camilla looked at the Priestess and said,” is the body of the man still inside that trap door? Did you leave him that way for the dead?”“Obviously I left him there for the dead. There is no point why I was going to talk to him or keep him safe, did it? He felt that I was the prey and he was the predator. He thought a lot of wrong things. He considered that there was a lot of power in him which he could use it over anyone and that is where the difference lay. I had to show him that he did not. I was trapped and drugged waiting to be killed but I was not killed. I was underground which means that I could not even have brought out the wind to aide me in my doing but that was also not going to happen. But today we are going to test if you have the powers of the dark or the powers of the light.”“What does that mean? Powers of dark and powers of light? I thought that I was supposed to be a werewolf….and that affected me somehow…?
Camilla’s POVThe doors swung open, and I stood before her, flanked by two of her zombie underlings. Even though I took this to be her personal bedroom, the stench of death and decay was unmistakable and unavoidable. The thought of who I might see on the other side of that door bothered me more than the two shambling corpses who had escorted me here. She was a Necromancer, it was assumed she'd have undead servants. They don't need to breath, don't need to eat, and don't complain if they are ordered to work for days on end without a rest. Perfect little slaves. Just like me...The sight wasn't anything like what I was prepared for. I had been expecting an adult, but this girl before me was only twenty if she was a day. Her blonde hair, streaked here and there with lines of red, flowed loose around her shoulders. Dark black eyes looked into mine, groping my inner thoughts with just her gaze. My mind started to fog, and I surrendered to her allure."Funny," S
I AM NOT SURE that you can hear me. I am not sure if you are still near to me, somewhere in the dark. I am not even sure that you are still alive. Last night, I heard you sobbing. The night before, I heard you scream when they came for you. Perhaps it was your screams, later on, that were punctuated by my own. Perhaps you cannot hear me, perhaps you will not comprehend the words that I am using. Perhaps you are not there at all. Still, I will continue to shout out my confession, to you and to the One God, as long as my voice persists. Would that I could write, but there is no vellum, no ink, no light. My arms are chained to the prison wall, spread above me. It is futile, futile. But, perhaps, if you can hear me, perhaps, if you can comprehend, my memory will live on for another year, another day, another hour. My time grows shorter now. I can hear the drums beating, the drunken peasants cheering. Even in this dungeon there is the sickening smell of burning flesh. They have alrea
Sally Arnott was walking home from her workplace Ringwald's Grocery, a small independent grocery. Her shift just ended thirty minutes ago. It was past midnight by the time she was walking to her home which was just five minutes away from Ringwald's. The attractive and blonde thirty-three year old was clad in her beanie, red sweater, jacket and jeans to withstand the autumn coldness of Michigan climate. Her bagpack contained her Ringwald's uniform and some basic necessities like snacks and a thermos. Despite past midnight, the empty country roads were still well lit."I can't wait for payday this Friday. Ringwald's is the best place to work in. Just five minutes away from my apartment, the customers are always nice, the boss is a wonderful man and the pay is good. With the money, I can eat a lot of snacks and binge-watch on Netflix this coming Halloween night." Sally thought as she trekked on the lonely country road to her apartment building.All o
The Priestess’s POVAs a dutiful daughter and the youngest of five sisters, I have six times witnessed the wretched state of a woman in marriage. It is a life wasted in the pretence that children will make him kind, patience will make him sober and forgiveness will make him faithful. So, with this knowledge, I spent my youth in our farming village pleading that my parents might permit me to join the convent. They had no time for my begging and declined my request without consideration. My match, it seemed, had been made in my early childhood. I was to be a wife.Aside from the nuns, I knew only of one woman who was free of the shackles of marriage. She went by many names, none of them flattering, and lived in the dense forest, just beyond the river that turned the wheel of our mill. They said she had made a deal with a demon, and lived as a sorceress or a fortune-teller or an oracle. They said that men that lay with her never begot sons even when they returned to
The room was cold, bare, windowless, uncompromising: perfect for interrogation. An unshaded bulb hung from the ceiling, struggling and failing to cast away the bleak shadows in the corners, and the furnishings consisted of a simple metal table and a simple metal chair, both bolted to the floor. The heavy iron door behind the chair had locked with a unnerving sound of finality as it closed shut, leaving the air in the room stale and fetid, and the single inhabitant of the room alone with her thoughts.She was a woman in her early thirties, with long, shoulder-length chestnut hair and matching eyes that stared forward, as if genuinely interested in the random cracks in the brick wall opposite her. She sat in the chair, her wrists bound by leather straps to the arms of it, her ankles bound in identical fashion to the front legs of it. She swallowed, long past panic, more accepting that her current predicament wasn't some terrible nightmare, that it was painfully real.A s