“The prophecy,” the priest who had bade them entry announced, “Master Bloodthorne embarks upon its fulfillment!”
“The prophecy!” they all cheered in unison, and then there was a frenzy. Robed members skittered around, rearranging tables and benches, grabbing brooms and sweeping the room’s center, carrying in and out baskets and crates from shadowy spaces off the main room. One of the members had bundled up the fabric they’d been working on, and Amma could see a nearly-completed, soft doll, red, horned, and it, indeed, had five appendages. Sheknewit: demons did have tails.
As everyone else moved around them, Amma actually found herself inching closer to Damien until she bumped his arm, and like she’d been shocked, she pulled back into herself. “It won’t work,” she hissed quickly.
“The prophecy? Well, it was given by the oracle, but I’ve been having my own doubts—wait, that isn’t what you mean, is it?”
One of the figures crossed the chamber with an overfilled armful of unlit candles, and another followed, picking up each as it fell and inspecting the dents left in the wax.
“Sacrificing me.” She swallowed, the words coming out quavering as she wondered if the argument would stick. “I’m not…qualified, not like he said. If you kill me like this, it’ll be a waste of everyone’s work.”
“You’re either brazen or clever but hopefully not both. Either way, sacrificing youwouldbe a waste.” Damien chuckled, and the sound made her sick despite the relief that she apparently wouldn’t be drained of her blood that night. “Pay no mind to The Brotherhood—they just say things like that because it’s what they think they ought to do. Summoning takes a life, but they haven’t done that for about seventy years, and I don’t think these specific members have really ever sacrificed anyone, virgin or otherwise.”
Someone scurried by carrying a stack of parchment with crude drawings in messy ink, flashing them both an unblinking smile. Amma hadn’t really encountered anything like them before, though they reminded her slightly of those who belonged to a temple. “What, um…whatarethey?”
Damien thought a moment. “They’re a sort of excessively zealous consortium who have unorthodox views.”
“You have a cult?” Amma’s voice was squeaky even as she tried to keep it low.
“No, no, this is their own thing, not mine. Big fans of my father, really, I just drop by in his stead on occasion.”
Amma watched the ruckus, robed figures bumping into one another, dropping things, knocking heads as they picked them up, scurrying about.Summoning, Damien said, and fans of hisfather. These…these were the vile, nefarious cultists who had summoned a demon from the infernal plane to wreak havoc on earth?
A cultist hustled up to them out of the frenzy. He dropped to a knee, thrusting a tray over his shaved head. Amma stepped back from the sudden movement, but when she saw the two goblets filled with a maroon liquid and a plate of flattened pastries, her eyes went wide with hunger. Damien picked up one of the sweets and gestured to the rest of the plate. “They’re actually quite good.”
Amma grabbed one and stuffed it in her mouth. Whether he meant to kill her or not, she didn’t intend to die hungry. The pastry was divine, but her mouth instantly dried up, and she reached for a goblet.
“Ah, ah.” Damien snatched her hand, then waved off the cultist. “Don’t drink the wine unless you’d like to end up a mindless devotee like them.”
As the members of The Brotherhood finished their tasks, Amma noted how they grinned, each in the same stilted and unnerving way. With the middle of the chamber now cleared, another cultist carried in a roll of crimson fabric that she began to unfurl at Damien’s feet, walking backward with a smile and beckoning them to follow across it.
Amma leaned in, her voice a whisper. “You mean they’re prisoners?”
Damien began to walk the length of fabric to the back of the chamber, and she kept up. “Of course not, but no one comes to The Brotherhood unwilling to forget some terrible misdeed or tragic upbringing or what have you. The wine’s enchanted to help clear their minds of, you know…guilt or shame or fear or whatever it is humans feel, and those pendants they’re wearing keep them complacent and manageable.”
There was a high-backed chair sitting alone at the end of the fabric they’d just pointlessly walked on to get from one end of the chamber to the other. Damien looked it over then dropped down with a huff, nothing like how someone calledmastermight, and sat there disinterested, elbows on the armrests and knees splayed out.
In the dim glow of the room, his eyes skimmed up Amma’s form slowly, her body flushing under the baggy clothes as she became too aware of herself. “On second thought, maybe you ought to have a taste. It may make you easier to deal with. Tell me, have you some horrible memory to expunge or a desire to abscond from your responsibilities?” His gaze reached her face, and it was as if he were looking right through her, seeing the horrible truth of those things written out on her insides.
But Amma shook her head. Things were dire enough—she didn’t need to be mindless atop it all.
Damien’s gaze didn’t relent, but he did move, leaning forward and taking her by the arm. Her heart shot up into her throat, and she put her hands out to stay upright, but he only tugged her a few inches toward him and out of the way of a cultist scurrying up behind her.
With a flourish, the cultist sat a simpler chair at Damien’s side and encouraged Amma to sit. She perched on the edge when he released her, thankful to both be out of his direct line of sight and not sitting on his lap where she’d momentarily and embarrassingly thought she’d end up.
Two more cultists rolled back the crimson fabric and removed it from the chamber. “Can they leave anytime they want?”
He shrugged, gesturing to a podium in the room’s corner, atop it a small statue of a bat-like creature carved from red stone. It gave off a gentle glow. “Maybe if that relic ever gets shattered.”
Arcana was being used to possess them. Dark arcana. Amma clicked her tongue, offended on their behalf.
Damien casually rested an elbow on the chair’s arm closest to her, chin in his hand, and she stiffened, afraid to move even as he came close. His eyes were unfeeling pits of violet as he murmured, “They’re castoffs and ne’er-do-wells. They were empty and hollow from whatever tragedy befell them—if they left, where would they even go? Brother Eternal Crud has given them purpose.” He pointed to the man who had answered the door, standing atop an upturned crate in the room’s corner and directing the others.
“Eternal Crud?”
“The cult’s been around a long time, so they’re really scrounging the bottom of the epithet barrel, I will admit.”
“Master Bloodthorne!” Brother Eternal Crud threw out his hands and crossed to the center of the now-empty room. The rest of the cultists fell into silence, watching from the wings of the chamber with long stares and smiles that didn’t reach their purple-rimmed, unblinking eyes. “Allow us to offer a gift for your travels.”
