It was not a request, and though a bargain had yet to be struck, the Grand Order was going to take what it wanted.
The miasmic cloud expanded, filling the whole of the chamber and blurring Damien’s vision. Blood pumped through him recklessly, noxscura mingling and heaving. He pressed fingers to his temples, fighting the arcana on instinct, but there would be no winning, only obscuring what he deemed most private, so he let the eyes in, and they saw…everything.
The pit was there before Damien again, tendrils lurching out and crushing men who tried to flee, the endless nothing at its core, and then the face, the one from The Wilds, the one that came out of his own reflection in the stump. Its voice asked again,One of Us?And the world was desolate and empty, razed cities, salted fields, crumbling cliffside, fear, chaos, destruction. Death.
Each image flashed atop one another, painting a grisly, unavoidable future if E’nloc were released, if It got what It wanted, to be free, to walk the earth, to inhabit a vessel. To inhabithim.
Damien’s guts twisted. He’d not meant to sharethat, but then more of what he didn’t intend to share spilled forward like intestines from a rent belly. Xander’s tower, Kaz’s heart, Amma’s smile, Delphine cackling, Zagadoth calling himKiddo, his mother wishing him a goodnight, shackles, scars, lips, a thankful draekin, a dagger piercing a finger, ice, feathers, blood, a kiss.
Damien pushed back, and the images wavered, a vision of Anomalous’s lab shifting into some other alchemical setup he’d never seen, a scattering of graves across the courtyard at Bloodthorne Keep that weren’t really there, liathau trees being felled in the orchard at Faebarrow and Amma’s hand digging into his wrist, refusing to let go as she screamed her throat rawon his name.
The visions vanished, and Damien staggered back, a burst of silver behind his eyes as noxscura choked back the arcane cloud. He was shaking, but could not stop it, didn’t want to stop it, and GOoD was…letting him?
With a sharp inhale, Damien straightened and called it all back. The noxscura obeyed, the miasma receded, and the chamber fell into a quiet, odd hum. Throats were cleared, robes shuffled, and Damien averted his gaze to focus on one of the chamber’s paintings, a man with a rope about his ankle, dangling over a chasm, Chthonic words scrawled at its bottom to read,Hang in there, baddy.
WE NEED NOT LOOK FURTHER. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. ALL OPPOSED? NAY. THE AYES HAVE IT.
It happened so quickly, Damien couldn’t tell who or how many had opposed, nor did he truly know what they were agreeing to.
CONGRATULATIONS, LORD BLOODTHORNE, YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN. YOU WILL BE SUMMONED AND GIVEN INSTRUCTIONS WHEN THE FORGING IS COMPLETE.
Damien didn’t like the sound of most of those words, not that any of them were specific enough to mean much, but at the moment he was really only concerned with one thing. “And?”
AND?
He held out his hands, waiting.
OH, YES, YOUR GIRLFRIEND. SHE WILL BE RELEASED ON THE CONTINGENCY YOU WILL COMPLETE THE TASK TO BE SET BEFORE YOU.
Face heating up, Damien stuttered too much to properly ask what that task would be.
YOU ARE DISMISSED. GO NOW, AND DO ENJOY THE REST OF YVLCON.
Enjoy was a loaded word.
Hours later, Damien found himself sitting in a plush chair amongst his peers, still waiting and doing absolutely no enjoying. If it was much longer, he was going to take to slitting throats, and he was going to start with conjuration mage Sceledrus Brack if the man didn’t shut up about the latest terror he’d unleashed on his pointless corner of the realm. He was blathering on about making scorpions rain from the sky, but Damien couldn’t concentrate with Amma still missing.
Nine hours and forty-two, no, forty-threeminutes. His eyes flicked down to his drumming fingers, dagger still sheathed on his bracer, then to the silver band around his wrist. Well, slitting throats was out, he supposed, unless he wanted to forfeit his own life too, but hecouldwrite a strongly worded letter to the Grand Order about how long Amma’s release was taking, and while submitting any kind of correspondence to GOoD would also require filling out a stack of frustrating and repetitive forms, he would do it if it meant each council member would have to suffer through reviewing them as well.
Damien began to compose the complaint in his mind to drown out Sceledrus's description of how delightful flesh appeared when stung and injected with venom. He sank a bit lower in his seat, the gaze he’d set on the hall’s entry blurring then smacked at his own cheek. How long had it been since he slept? To think, he had only woken beside Amma the day prior, attended a fae gathering in the Everdarque, lost her to his own foolish temper, spent the night flying to where she’d been taken, found her, and then when she was safely wrapped in his arms, she had finally—thrust a goblet into his face.
The second paragraph of Damien’s mind-drafted letter which highlighted every heinous act he could have committed in the time it took to unlock one woman’s cell door was interrupted by a servant girl handing him a cup of wine. Alcohol dulledYvlcon’s attendees’ natural proclivities for violence, so there was a constant push to keep them all just a little boozed up. Damien sighed and took a swig before setting the goblet down with enough force to slosh half of it out and went right back to brooding. If anything happened to Amma, if just one golden hair on her head were displaced, he would be crushing skulls and dropping bodies into piranha ponds and—
“Um, Damien?”
He sat up, eyes snapping to the girl who wasn’t a servant at all but Amma. The simultaneous burst of elation in his chest and the wave of relief at her voice left Damien frozen, though how she was dressed, or rather not, certainly didn’t help his ability to function normally.
Barefoot, bare-legged, bare-stomached, all that covered her was a narrow fall of crimson fabric hanging from a black chain perched low on her hips. Hips that he had seen in tight breeches but never looking so round and so soft and, well, so naked. She inhaled shallowly, her navel twitching with a nervous breath and chest swelling, a second swath of red silk barely containing her breasts.
Though the other Yvlcon servants dressed in variations of the same, he rarely took more than a cursory glance at just how little they wore. As much as his appreciation for it, amongst other things, suddenly grew, the way Amma stood there with pinched knees, clasped hands, and gnawed-on, painted lips made him want to rip every stitch off of her but somehow also bury her under a pile of linens before anyone else could touch her.
Which was about to happen.
Sceledrus had been eyeing the back of Amma even more salaciously than Damien did her front, and the miscreant made his move. Damien lunged simultaneously, yanking her out of Sceledrus’s wandering reach for her ass. Amma squealed,knocked off balance and falling onto Damien’s shoulder. He growled from beside her hip, the word feral on his tongue, “Mine.”
The mage gave him a protesting look. “You can’t just lay claim to a servant like that. At least play me a round of dice for her.”
It was far too easy for Damien to shift himself up against Amma’s hip and lift her right off the ground. “I’ll claim her however I want.”
