Private Tales Where Even the Stones Scream

[Shrike]

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The leaking rainwater of the evening storm mixed with the ocean's spray and seeped through the cold, cruel rocks of Cerak At'Thul, down through the lower dungeons. This tepid, salt-poisoned water collected in puddles. One such puddle sat in her cell, near her bedroll and some straw - the only kindness afforded her, if it could even be called that.

Here, in one of the deepest parts of the ancient fortress, there were no windows. No slits in the wall. No skylights. Nothing to admit light, or to judge the passing of time.

Nothing but the drip, drip, drip of water to note a passing storm. And the roar of cracking thunder, heard even through so much sorcerous stone. Ah. The stone. Black as pitch and offending to the eye to look at for too long. The whole fortress was made from it. Those in the town said it was cursed by the builders, that it drove men mad.

Perhaps it did.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Utter darkness gripped the cells, broken only by the approach of torch light when the gaoler came to feed her - that horned schemer, Gwyddion.

In the past innumerable hours, or maybe days, two other prisoners had once sat in cells of their own nearby. Company at least. Before they'd been taken away by Gwyddion, through the door. They'd never returned, but their distant screaming had echoed, even through the stones.

The door at the end of the hall groaned opened with a squeal and torch light flooded the cell block - empty but for her, Keres.

The approaching footsteps were not the clip of Gwyddion's cloven feet upon the stone, but leather boots. The blinding light of the torch grew closer, until a tall, hooded figure stood outside the bars to her cell, the torch in one of his hands. Locks of long, white hair spilled out from beneath his hood, but his jaw was clean shaven - skin a dark gray.

"Well, Spy," came a thin, cold voice, sharp as a dagger's razored tip, "will you confess?"

The same question Gwyddion had asked her, every time he brought food. They thought she'd come to their island with the rest, to spy on the Black Bay's Wardens.

Outside, waves broke against the cliffs of Cerak, beneath a fortress of black stone that made eyes water and ache just to look upon.

 

[Keres]

Keres had stopped trying to tell time. The cells swallowed it whole. No sun, no moon, no thin sliver of sky to mark an hour. Darkness lay over her so thick she could not see her own hands held an inch from her face, and so she'd taken to keeping her eyes closed.

That fucking drip though. The sound had a rhythm that wanted to reorder her mind into something small and obedient. If the putrid water and the darkness and the occasional sounds of thunder and screaming were not enough to fray her, then the dead were. Their breath was everywhere, whispered words curling through the seams in the stone until she felt them crawl under her skin.

She curled into herself, knees to chest, arms over ears. Shut up, shut up, shut up. The whispering rose and braided into a roar in her skull and she pressed harder, as if pressure could clamp their voices down. It didn’t help. It never did. She couldn't hear herself think. But then, what was there to think about? She was stuck here in this stinking void, waiting for her turn to die, and nobody but the wardens and the dead knew she was here..

Then, the voices hushed as steps grew closer. Her throat worked around a hunger that was more a physical hollowness than an appetite. She imagined bread, fresh and warm for a foolish second, and then the dream curdled into the reality of the mouldy rations she was usually left with.

When torchlight finally spilled down the corridor it stabbed at her eyes. She blinked them open, squinting, raising a hand automatically to shield her face from that burning glare. The light made the shadows snap into sudden, ugly clarity of iron bars, wet straw, a hooded figure framed in flame and smoke.

Another voice. Same question. Same slow, practiced hunger behind the words. She pushed herself upright with a groan, straw rasping under her, nails clicking against the stone as she steadied.

“Apparently,” she said irritably, “the truth is not what you people want to hear, and honestly, the routine is growing weary. If death is the quickest way of getting out of this godforsaken pit then yes, I confess - I’m a spy.” Her laugh was mirthless with exhaustion. “Though exactly what I’d be spying on is beyond me. This is the most boring place I’ve ever had the misfortune of finding myself, and the standard of hospitality is severely fucking lacking.”

She let the words hang, the defiance trembling at the edges. Her eyes narrowed, still dazzled by the torch as she held up her wrists to the figure. "Lets be done with it.”

 

[Shrike]

The figure cocked his head and from within the hood's shadows came the glint of eyes reflecting the torchlight. He seemed to ponder her answer.

"...Boring," the word skated from his lips as though a vile utterance, an affront to his ears.

Of all the hateful wails and pitiful sobs, when last had he and his been called... boring? A ploy to draw his ire.

Gwyddion was right. She had a tenacity, this one. Such defiance. The barest twitch of his lips in a smile's pale specter.

"You, of all people, should know death is no release from these ancient stones. Can you hear them? The whispers?"

His hand caressed one of the stone blocks forming the edge of her cell, its surface an oily pitch to the eye. Then his attention returned to her, his fingers contorting in a summoning gesture.

In her cell, the pooling shadows crept forward in tendrils of deepest midnight, curling around her calves and up around her arms, their touch the chill of pre-dawn fog. They pulled her toward the bars of the cell, with a hideous, insistent strength like the ocean's tidal force, drawing her to press up against those unyielding bars of old wrought iron, where her captor might see her better.

The torchlight flickered and crackled, pitch smoke mixing with the other lingering smells of mildew and rot.

"Look at you, wretched thing," the words crooned from his lips, almost tender, "Perhaps I shall grant your wish, if you cooperate. For whom do you spy? Prince Tulok? Or that lich from the north, perhaps?"

Keres

 

[Keres]

Her jaw clenched until it ached when he spoke of the whispers. Gods, he had no idea. If only he had to hear them the way she did; unceasing, clawing, begging. If there was one mercy, it was that she could not see them in the darkness.

When the shadows coiled up her legs, she hissed softly between her teeth. They weren’t just cold, they felt like a violation. Slick, oily things, as though night itself had been given form and poured over her skin. Every inch they crept made her flesh crawl, her stomach churn. They dragged her with a strength she could not resist, her body jerked forward like a marionette without strings until her ribs pressed flush to the iron bars. The chill of them needling deep into her bones.

The powerlessness burned more than the cold. It was a brand against her pride, a reminder of her shackles, of every moment since she’d woken on the ashen sand of this fucking island. She wanted to thrash, to spit, to claw, but she swallowed it down.

Blinking against the torchlight, her eyes adjusted enough to catch the outline of his hooded face, the gleam of those eyes. Her own dark gaze glistened in the light, catching fire like amber, but she held them steady on him. She would not give him the pleasure of seeing her afraid.

“Me?” Her voice rasped, dry with thirst yet sharp as ever. “Oh, I spy for myself. Made something of a hobby of it, really.” A sly smile pulled at the corner of her cracked lips. “Turns out there’s not much else to do in this charming little shithole of yours.”

Her tone carried that same reckless defiance, though every nerve under her skin screamed at the shadows’ touch.

 

[Shrike]

"You're just as brazen as he said," the hooded figure whispered, almost to himself. So few on this island dared to speak to him thus. Perhaps she would not either, if she knew who he was, or perhaps her hate would be redoubled. Again, that ghost of a smile in the merest twitches of sallow muscle, as if they could recall the memory of one, but had forgotten how to form it.

He stuck the torch in a wall sconce, then wrapped his fingers around her jaw as the shadows pressed her to the bars. A ruby-eyed gaze surveyed her, studying acutely, as if he might augur to her soul and extract her essence with mere examination.

"Good."

Did it pain him to admit how truly her words truck home? Only she did not realize... it was the foolish town of Cerak that was such a banal blight, always troubling him with uprisings and chaos. Spend a hundred years in a place and you see more than your fair share. Yet he still had not uncovered the mysteries of this fortress. That is what she did not yet understand... unless, of course, that was her purpose here. Sent to uncover the citadel's secrets.

"I will enjoy breaking you," he said simply.

A gesture of his hand and the magical lock on the cell twisted with a clunk of metal, then he pulled open the door. It groaned open, protesting its disuse, and a glimmer of freedom might appear, but for the shadows holding her fast. He watched her with a slightly bored expression, expecting the thrashing and protests and gnashing of teeth that always accompanied these moments.

The shadows gripped her tightly as the hooded figure retrieved a set of manacles from the wall and clicked them into place around her wrists, then he led her by the chain down the hallway toward that door. The one at the end of the hall. The one that led to salvation or to screams, or perhaps both.

"Come. What is it you call yourself, slave?"

Keres

 

[Keres]

Keres's jaw was a stone wall. His fingers curled around her chin and she met that ruby glare dead on, every instinct screaming to look away, to tremble, to beg, but she did not. She had seen worse, felt worse, and if this was the end she would not give him the theatre of her fear.

Breaking her? The word scraped at some raw place inside her and she forced down the shudder that tried to crawl her spine. Her hands trembled only a fraction as the shadows released their hold, and the bite of iron at her wrists was a lesser torment than the things that had lived in her head for nights on end. She was almost grateful for the tangible weight of metal; real, predictable, infuriatingly simple.

“Break me?” she said, voice hoarse from thirst and cold and too many sleepless nights. “For what? I already confessed to whatever tidy accusation you lot prefer.” She lifted her chin. There would be no thrashing. No theatrics. She would not give him that satisfaction.

She let him lead her, the chain clinking a small, bitter music, and offered him a sneer of dark sarcasm “I call myself royally fucked. What about you?” she muttered, because names were useless here and titles were trinkets, and because if she couldn’t wound his pride, she’d at least shove a barb where she could.

 

[Shrike]

A wry, rasping laugh slid from his throat the way an edged sword whispers when drawn from its sheath.

"Such a clever tongue."

He pulled on the chain and it rattled, dragging her forward to follow him down the hallway. They reached the far door and he pulled it open, revealing another hallway lit intermittently by more torches in wall sconces.

The only sound in the hallway was the crackle of the torches, the footfall of his leather boots and the slapping of her bare feet upon the stone, the rattle of the chains... and the whispers in the walls.

"There is a bird on this island. A small thing," he glanced back at her, "Like you. No great war hawk or swooping sea eagle. But it impales its prey on the tines of thorn trees. Leaves them there to dry in the sun, a stocked larder. And a warning. It's called the shrike."

The hooded figure came to a stop in front of a simple wooden door.

"That is what you may call me. Shrike."

A push and the door opened. A coppery tang smote the senses and an orange glow spilled out into the hallway.

"You give me half-truths and the bite of a caustic wit. A passing amusement," he jerked harshly on the chain, drawing her into the room after him. "But the doldrums approach."

The light came from a basin of heated coals standing high in one corner of the room. Best to look there and not down. Not around. Not at the walls lined with sharp and jagged instruments. Not at the twin tables and their straps and the slick of scarlet still wet, pooling beneath one, dripping toward a drain in the floor to drip, drip, drip.

The door swung shut behind her and Shrike looked down upon her, he must have been north of six feet, taller than even many orcs.

"Your winds have died and you've no oars with which to row," he remarked somberly, "Paddle with your wit. We will see how far it gets you before it turns to screams."

Somewhere through the stones, the crack of distant thunder.

"Or start anew and tell me your story as you believe it."

Keres

 

[Keres]

Chains bit into her wrists in time with the stone’s cold heartbeat as Shrike dragged her down that damp, oppressive corridor. Each step echoed in her bones, each torch threw up shadows that seemed to lean in closer. The sinking feeling in her gut wasn't just fear anymore. It was the cruel certainty of being hauled toward something that had been waiting for her to arrive. She had heard those screams. She was going to die. Not quickly. Not cleanly.

Her 'clever tongue,' the shield she’d brandished for so long, went suddenly very fucking dry. Her mouth filled with grit, her heart hammered so loud she could feel it under her ribs as if it might shatter the thin shell of her calm. The walls pressed in with a weight she’d never noticed before in the cell, a cell she now missed quite terribly.

The door swung and the room hit her, the sour, metallic wave of rot and blood that burned behind her nose. For a breath she saw everything at once; the coals’ orange glow, the instruments like the teeth of some patient beast, the wet scarlet pooling and winding toward the drain, and her eyes widened as if she’d stepped off a cliff. She was pulled inside and stumbled against him, though instinct pushed her weight toward the door and she pulled back, toward anything solid and sane.

Then the voices exploded. Not the low, writhing whispers of the dungeon walls but raw, ragged screams, every one of them a brand on her mind. Pain and pleading and something older and fouler than pain filled the chamber, and Keres made a sound she didn’t know she had in her- a trembled whine that climbed up and out of her chest. Her shoulders rose to her ears in a vain attempt to smother the noise, though she knew it would do nothing. Her body folded inward, trying to curl small enough to hide from the sound itself.

“Ah—I…” Her head felt full of thudding water, each pulse making her vision swim. Dark eyes squeezed shut, her words tangled in her throat and came out strangled. “Keres… My name is Keres…” she forced out, breath hitching between the screams. “I don’t have much of a story… I’m no-one. The ship I was on ran ashore and I—” the room screamed louder, drowning the rest of her sentence. “Please, the screaming is torture enough, just end this…”

 

[Shrike]

“Shhh.”

A cruel finger, the nail pointed and white, pressed to her chin and forced it up to meet his gaze.

“I believe you.”

Fear broke her, as it broke them all in this room. He could see the terror writ plainly in her shivering. Though he sensed it had more to do with these voices than with the promise of pain.

“You can hear them?” A low, hungry rasp. “So Gwyddion was right…”

She might be the key after all. How long since they’d had a Deadspeaker in the fortress? Not in decades. The walls drove them all mad, eventually.

His nail trailed across her cheek.

A shame.

His hand wrapped around her throat with sudden violence and he lifted her up bodily, his other hand coming around to secure her manacles in a meat hook that hung from the rafter overhead. Quickly as they’d seized her, his hands left, letting her dangle there in suspension. The loose chain rattled by her side as she hung.

“Tell me what you hear. The screams. What are they saying?” The words hissed from his lips. He could not deny his avarice for this knowledge - a hunger which gnawed daily at the confines of his mind.

Shrike turned away from her lest his need for this knowledge be bared nakedly before her, choosing instead to stare into the open bed of coals nearby - the only source of light and heat in this room.

Keres

 

[Keres]

Her eyes opened when his finger lifted her chin, reluctant but helpless to resist. They were near black, glistening so that his pale features reflected back at him in their shine. So, the damned orc had been listening after all, filing away her mutterings in the dark. She had been too frayed to care before, now she cursed herself for it.

Her lips curled as if to spit something sharp, but his hand cut the thought short. Fingers closed around her throat, iron and sudden, and she was lifted from the ground like it was nothing at all. Her breath fled in a startled rasp, feet kicking, toes scraping at the stone. The hook clanged as her wrists were hauled up and locked in place, leaving her dangling like meat left to dry. Panic flared wild, legs thrashing, lungs burning.

The screams surged again, louder, layered on top of each other until they were a wall of sound crashing over her. He asked what they were saying, but how could anyone hear words in that tide? She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her mind against them, against her own terror. Hush, hush, please hush. She tried to force herself into stillness, tried to sift through the endless shrieks for a thread of meaning. But the harder she reached, the harder her chest heaved and the higher the voices rose, until it was all just noise and fire inside her skull.

Her head fell back with a rattle of chain. Her voice cracked out, hoarse and desperate.. “They’re saying…” Her breath caught, half a sob, half a laugh. “…Let ... Keres... go.”

The chains shivered with the motion of her trembling body, a pitiful music against the roar of phantom screams. She opened her eyes again, black pools glistening, and met his back as he stared into the coals. “Maybe you should listen.”

 

[Shrike]

“Is that so?”

He closed his eyes and let out a long breath, nostrils flaring, then his lips peeled back from his teeth in a rictus grin.

Such petulant defiance, even when faced by certain agony…

It seemed he must tack to leeward.

“I thought you a quick study.”

Reaching into the bed of coals in the brazier before him, Shrike picked one up with his bare hand. The ember glowed an orange-red hue like molten metal. He turned back to this wretch, who alone possessed the power he sought, and approached.

“Did I not tell you of the doldrums? There is no wind for wit’s sails here.”

He held up his hand before her face, just under her nose, as she hung. The hot coal blackened his skin and turned his palm into a raw and blistering mess of flesh. A hiss escaped from between his teeth, mirroring the sizzling. The stench of cooking meat rose in the air, his own skin charring and melting. He closed his fingers fully around the coal and squeezed. It broke apart in tiny embers, slipping between his fingers to fall to the floor, tiny motes stinging at legs and feet as they fell.

“I will teach you. Keres.”

Circling her as a spider might a fly caught in its web, he came to a stop behind her. Fingers slipped through the tangle of her dark hair and gripped her tresses by the roots, yanking back her head with casual vehemence.

“You want to be free? To be tossed back on the mainland? You would be hunted down and burned at the stake within a week.”

His mouth came beside her ear, breath hot.

“Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me I lie.”

Keres

 

[Keres]

Her body writhed on the hook like a fucking bait worm on a line, legs kicking uselessly as the ember hissed and spat in his hand. She could hear the tiny, angry sizzles, could feel the hot breath of it lick her cheek as he held it close, and the stink of burning flesh filled her lungs until she choked on it. Shrike’s palm looked wrong against the coal, skin blistering and blackening and yet he didn’t seem to feel the pain, and that fact made bile rise in her throat.

She turned her face away instinctively, coughing as smoke clawed at her throat. The embers showered from his palm and she kicked as they caught her bare feet, flinching at the snap of heat stinging her skin. Then his hand found her hair and the world contracted, scalp searing under his grip, teeth grinding, a sharp inhale ripping up through her.

The screams in the walls climbed again until they were almost a physical thing pressing into her chest and beneath them, a small, ashamed truth ticked like a seed in soil. Yes. They’d hunted her. Guise and sermon and hatred had chased her across coasts and through courts. She’d been running as long as she could remember. She could not un-remember that fact any more than she could un-feel his fingers clenching her scalp.

Still, she spat it out through clenched teeth, voice a ragged growl. “What do you want from me?” she ground out, each word forced between the sting of her scalp and the fear in her chest.

 

[Shrike]

“The voices,” the words slithered from his tongue in a hiss.

He could feel her faye spirit, burning with hatred at the world. A shared sentiment.

If he let her dangle here with the voices, alone, she might be driven as insane as the others. That simply would not do.

“You can hear them. I need your ears.”

A cold finger caressed one of her ears, heedless of the grime and filth coating her.

“But you will be driven mad without protection. I offer you relief.”

The living shadow eeked from the sleeves of his robes like a rising fog, and slithered into both of her ears. Some magic in those shadows muffled the screaming.

His hold on her hair loosed and once more he walked around her, boots scraping against stone, until he stood in front of her. Ruby eyes regarded her without pity, but also without spite.

“There are truths in the voices. Mysteries of the universe. Help me uncover them, Keres…”

His head cocked to one side and he put his finger on her shoulder, tracing along the line of her collarbone idly.

“Or must I break you first?”

Keres

 

[Keres]

Keres squirmed uncomfortably as the shadow slithered into her ears, but the relief hit hard. The screaming receded from a roar to a distant, hateful bleat and her whole body, dangling from the hook, slumped a fraction. She could breathe without the sound shredding her mind.

She watched him return to stand before her, dark eyes tracking the slow circle he made. His nail traced the line of her collarbone and she swallowed hard, the taste of smoke and iron still thick in her mouth. Mysteries of the universe, he said. Keres nearly laughed but forced it down until it scraped. Read a fucking book...?

“I don’t work very well when I’m broken,” she said, voice brittle, jaw clenched. The words were honest, not bravado. Break her and the voices would win, keep her whole and she might still be useful.

She forced a bitter half smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Fine. I’ll tell you what they say, if that’s what you want. But don’t expect poetry. Most of it’s a lot of shite. Old grudges, hungry things, scraps of names and places, echoes of their last living moments. Mostly shite..”

 

[Shrike]

“Those are just the shades,” Shrike said flatly, expression bored. “The true voices are deeper still. You are not yet ready for them.”

Those near the foundations would shred her mind in an instant. They taxed even his, merely to stand there, so close to the ancient stones - protection of the Void or no.

His wandering finger stopped at the hollow of her throat. Such dark eyes, so full of bitterness and vitriol and a deep, abiding loneliness.

Hmm.

“No, I don’t need to break you,” he agreed. “They already did that long ago, didn’t they?”

The filth of the prison lay on her, whatever the original color of her dress it was scarce recognizable now. Her raven hair all matted and gnarled in tangles. Her nails ruinous.

The white-haired Shrike did not seem to care.

“They destroy what they do not understand,” his words came almost gently, almost softly, before snapping with suddenness like a rope cracking taut.

“But you defied me. And I am lord of this place. That cannot go unpunished.”

His eyes wandered to the array of instruments behind her. Taking his time.

Keres

 

[Keres]

Keres’s brow drew down as he spoke of shades and something deeper; a prickle of curiosity nicked at her despite everything. Who were the true voices, then? The question sat in her like a stone and she watched him, silent, eyes narrowing. He spoke as if he knew what she'd suffered. That understanding, real or feigned, made her jaw tighten.

Good, she thought, because these chains were really starting to chafe. Every muscle ached. Her wrists burned where iron bit her flesh; her shoulders screamed.. She stayed silent at the prospect of potential relief. She expected, stupidly, briefly, that common ground would be enough for him to let her down from here now that she’d been willing to be useful.

The hope was swiftly shattered.

"What?!!" The word burst from her and bounced around the chamber before she could swallow it. She spun her head, straining to see, trying to catch sight of the instruments, trying to guess which new cruelty he fancied. Adrenaline and dread flooded hot and cold through her veins. “Defied you how?! I said I’d listen - I’ll tell you what they say!”

She wriggled, dragging the chain with a metallic clink, testing the hooks as if brute movement might find a weakness. Frustration climbed into her throat and came out as a dark, raw sound. “Fuck you! You miserable fuck!” she spat, voice ragged. Her chest heaved and breaths came sharp and shallow.

"If you think for one moment that I intend on keeping my word if you hurt me then you're dead fucking wrong!"

 

[Shrike]

Again she thrashed, a caught leopard, hissing and spitting venom with every breath. Screaming at him. Raging. Shrieking.

He stood there, impassive, and her words broke around him as the ocean broke upon his fortress. The pale haired king made no move, letting her tire herself out until her voice ran raw and ragged with fear and desperation and hate.

At last, he said coldly, “Punished. Not harmed.”

With a wave of his hand the manacles burst open, dropping her onto the floor. He made no move to help her up, merely pointing to the wall behind her.

“There is a bucket and a mop. Clean this room. The gaoler will bring you food.”

Then he turned and departed, the door slamming behind him.

***

Sometime later, the gaoler and steward - horned Gwyddion - arrived and brought her food. He was not unkind, but neither did he take any special pains except to bring her some stew he claimed to have made himself.

After she ate, regardless of the state of the room, she was led out of the dungeon, up a series of stairs, and to a bed chamber inside the fort which overlooked the ocean. There was a real bed. And a wash basin. Little else.

There seemed far too few people in Cerak At’thul, given the size of the keep.

In the morning, as dawn broke and storm clouds from yesterday lingered overhead, her door opened suddenly and without warning, admitting the red-eyed pirate lord of this hell hole.

Keres

 

[Keres]

The cold stone had bitten deep into her palms and knees when she’d been dropped, skin scraped raw, a hiss ripping from between her teeth as she’d looked up just in time for the door to slam. The bucket and mop mocked her from the shadows. She’d stormed over and kicked them both across the chamber, voice echoing hard off the walls..

“Are you fucking KIDDING ME?!!” Her fury had nowhere to go but in circles, pacing, seething, rattling the emptiness of the room with her ragged breaths.

By the time Gwyddion arrived, she'd been about to tear into him when she smelled real food, hot and fragrant, and her stomach twisted. Pride made her want to spit in the bowl, but hunger made her dig in, silently and with a sharp focus, not giving him the satisfaction of words.

The climb up those endless stairs was torture in its own way, her legs aching, lungs tight, but when the air shifted and the light brightened, her head lifted, every sense straining. She was leaving the dungeon. Leaving the screams.

The room they brought her to might have been sparse, but a bed was a miracle, the basin and window luxuries she hadn’t dared imagine. She stood before the window like a starving child staring at a feast, drinking in the endless sea she could never hope to cross. The window was a promise and a prison both. But when night fell and waves battered stone below, their rhythm wove through her until her body, still aching, still trembling, gave way. She slept deep and dreamless.

Until the door slammed open.

She jerked upright, heart hammering, the sudden intrusion cleaving her peace in two. He strode in, his shadow cutting through the dim morning light. She squinted up at him, her scowl replacing the softness of sleep in an instant as she rubbed her face, forcing her breathing even.

“Well that was rude,” she muttered, voice rough with sleep but edged with bite, though her pulse thudded like a caged bird against her ribs.

 

[Shrike]

The Shrike’s lips twitched, a flash of irritation cracking his facade of impassive callousness. None dared speak to him thus. None still living, leastways.

“Such irony,” he remarked, voice the cold, high bite of winter wind, “I’ve no patience for your tongue this morning.”

Glancing at the basin, then the bed, then her again, he let out a short snort through the nose. She still wore those stained rags. Did Gwyddion forget? No. The horned one never forgot. He did this to spite his lord, to spoil the meat. Fingernails bit into the pal of his hand as his fist clenched.

This girl still rubbed the sleep from her eyes, yet he had already been up for hours.

“Get up. We go to the chamber.”

He did not wait for her compliance, the shadows coalescing around her form, their touch cold and ephemeral as moor mist, pushed at her form. Urging her to follow. Demanding she follow.

Questions such as had she eaten or was she thirsty did not even cross the mind of the red eyed king. His thoughts dwelled on darker matters, soiled by that fool Agravayne’s antics in the bay last night. Slaughtering a ship captain over an insult. Pathetic. He had been forced to massacre the entire crew. They now hung from the walls, a proper message - doing what Agravayne had failed to do.

Down, down, down the stairs the clambered and across a grim courtyard, passing through a series of doors. Slaves ducked swiftly out of the way, features frozen in horror at his approach.

He and Keres soon entered a large room that resembled an antechamber or speaking hall. Circular and the floor of black marble. Large standing stones stood in the center of the chamber, reminiscent of a pergola without walls or a roof, just massive bits of stone arranged in a circle around nothing but barren marble in the center.

Shrike led her to the center of that stone ring and turned, to regard her.

“This is the chamber. We do not know its purpose. Summoning or sacrifice, maybe. There are voices of the builders here. Whispers. Not so strong as what you would hear at the foundations. You will listen and tell me what they say. Now.”

Keres

 

[Keres]

Like she had the patience for his shit?

Keres huffed sharply, but kept her mouth shut until he uttered the word that made her stomach drop—chamber. His shadows skimmed her skin like serpents and she fought them, every muscle braced, though the things tugged at her, forcing her to move.

“I can walk on my own, you know,” she spat. “These things are disgusting.” Her fingers scraped uselessly at the air where the mist clung, nails catching on nothing.

The room hit her the second her bare feet found the black marble. Just being here felt wrong. The stone was slick with a chill that seemed to drink the warmth from her skin. The standing rocks loomed like waiting mouths, and she felt like she was walking straight into a trap.

Her heart thudded loud enough to drown the softer whispers, a hard, unfamiliar beat that shoved into her throat. She tried to drag herself back, to step out of that circle, but the pull of those shadows left the effort hollow. Her skin crawled, gooseflesh blooming across her arms as something pressed against her mind, calling to her blood.

She turned her head to him slowly, eyes hooded and dark with something like dread. Her voice came out small and brittle, more honest than defiant. “I.. can't hear.. I don't know..”

 

[Shrike]

“Can’t?” A viper’s hiss, low and lethal.

The muscles in his jaw writhed as his teeth clenched together with awakened ire.

“Pathetic creature.”

He would shatter her to pieces right here and now, but for her use to him. And if she had no use? Then he had no need of her or her petulant mouth.

Yet, the horror and fear lurking unshrouded in those dark pools she called eyes spoke to him. He ran a tongue against the back of his teeth.

The shadows oppressing her writhed with languid vehemence at his command, wrapping themselves about her slender arms and tracing up her bare feet and calves with an aching slowness.

“You think I can’t see through the tremors of your flesh? Do not lie to me. What do you hear?”

He loomed over her, the promise of pain evident in the cruel and callous glint of those eyes red as rubies.

Keres

 

[Keres]

Keres writhed as the shadows tightened, a slick cold that felt alive crawling over her. The chill bit deep enough to make her teeth ache. “Stop—” she gasped, the sound half prayer, half command, though whether it was meant for him or the thing scratching at the inside of her skull was unclear even to her.

There were the whispers and voices she heard, formless, those were most common. There were the spectres and souls she seen, wandering the wrong planes lost and alone. And then there were the kinds of things that could get inside her head. That could take over her mind and drag her to a time and place she did not belong, and those things terrified her most. A mind was an easy thing to lose, after all.

Her body trembled from head to toe. The whispers braided into a rhythm, then again into something older and far more powerful.. Chants, a language she did not know, one meant for gods and ancient things, that grated on her. She clutched at her temples as her mind cracked open, fingers useless against whatever was finding purchase in her mind. “I… I don't understand what they're saying,” she managed, words tripping over each other as panic clawed upward. She squeezed her eyes shut so hard her lids ached.

But closing them only made the visions come faster. The room tilted, the stone beneath her feet dissolved into something older and blacker. Robed figures closed in, pale faces ringed around her, palms turned outward and each slick with blood. The scent of iron flooded her nose so suddenly she gagged on it.. Her gaze -not her gaze, but a borrowed sight - watched blood, her blood but not her blood, spill into cracks in stone, watched hands call to her as if she were the thing they had always been waiting for.

Not her. Not her body. Not her time. The thought slammed through her like an undertow. She lurched inside herself, a stranger in her own skin. “They summoned me…” she croaked, the words coming out raw and small, as if admitting it aloud might tether her to the present. Her breaths came in short jagged bursts.

"Please make them stop.."

Panic threaded with a perverse, guilty clarity. Those voices weren’t just noise. They remembered rites, names, places she had never learned, and they were pressing, insistent and hungry, for a conduit. For a mouth to speak back. For hands to answer them in the language her lips could not form. Her body trembled beneath his shadows, and for a breath she felt the edges between her and the old world thin until she could not tell which pulse belonged to her and which belonged to stone.

 

[Shrike]

Her mouth’s hoarse intonations sounded in the chamber, parched and panicked cries that reverberated with an echo. They rang in his ears, more perfect than the plucked chords of a harp. Nearly as perfect as the crashing of the ocean.

The Shrike watched her with rapt attention on every shudder, shiver, and tremble of her pale form. His eyes stood wide and his nostrils flared as the realization took hold. She could not merely hear them. She could see, could sense, could taste.

Desire ripped through him, raw and envious and vile, a gnawing hunger suddenly awakened. He wanted to see as she saw, to hear as she heard. The secrets of the far distant past. The mysterious of the universe. The shadow veil between this world and the others. Oh how he wished to rip that veil in ‘twain and gaze beyond.

He wanted to pluck her and hear those notes sing.

Make them stop.

His fingers brushed across her cheek, nearly reverent.

“No.”

The living shadows drifted up to her lips, half-opened in pleading, and poured into her mouth. They funneled down her throat in a rushing torrent of coiling cold vapor as he sought to possess her and see as she saw. His dark and foul magic worked on her, strumming at the chords of her essence. Her soul.

Those fingers on her cheek fell to her throat, wrapping tightly to hold her there as he rifled through the fabric of her being to gaze upon the newly formed memories.

“You magnificent wretch,” he whispered, a smile’s grim ghost cutting across his lips.

Keres

 

[Keres]

Keres convulsed as the shadows flooded into her mouth, slick and freezing as though she had swallowed a mouthful of icy water. They clawed through her chest, scraping across the inside of her skull until there was no corner of her mind untouched. She gasped, choked, the sound tearing raw from her throat, then she screamed, high and ragged, as though it had been torn from centuries past.

Her back arched violently in his grasp, the tendons of her throat stretched taut beneath his hand as though her body sought to tear itself away from its own skin. Her eyes rolled white, then bled black, pupils drowning until only two yawning voids stared from her face.

And then, the vision. The chamber was not empty but alive, packed with robed figures chanting in guttural harmony, their voices layered one atop the other until it scraped bone. She felt their blood running, hot and slick, dripping from their palms, mingling with her own as crimson rivers pooled in the cracks of the black marble. The stones pulsed, drank, hummed.

Her breath hitched, but it wasn’t hers. She was seeing through eyes that weren’t her own. She was the one in the circle, bound in flesh, every vein afire with chains of spellwork sinking deep. She felt her essence lashed to the foundations, anchored into the stones themselves, devoured slowly, eternally. A demon, bound here, enslaved to feed the keep itself.

Keres felt its agony, its rage, its endless scream, and it was hers too. The chants sharpened to needles in her ears, drilling through thought, flaying apart identity.

Her mouth filled with copper. A wet gargle shook her chest, and when she exhaled, blood poured from her lips and splattered hot across his hand at her throat. Tears ran unchecked from her blackened eyes, streaking her dirtied cheeks.

Her body shook harder, spasms rattling her bones.
It was not her death, not her body in that circle, not her sacrifice..
And yet she felt every cut, every drop of blood drain from her, every second of it.

She was dying. Not her.
…Maybe her.

 

[Shrike]

Triumph thrummed through him as he saw through her eyes into the vision of the past: a sacrament of blood and a demon of one of the further realms. So, this was their purpose here. Part of their black art.

The Butcher of the Bay watched in sick fascination, picking over every detail as a stone mason might look over a marble statue, wondering how he might recreate it.

A thrill of mortal lust interlaced with that triumphant rush to pulse through him at the arching of her back and those taut tendons beneath his grasp.

But he could feel her mind fraying in the threefold grip - torn between him, the voices, and her own spirit.

Then the blood gushed from her lips in a sudden spew that dribbled down to run slick and warm across his hand.

His mouth curled in frustration. If he left her in this place she would die. Torn between his desire to complete the vision of the ritual and his need to keep her whole and somewhat sane, he stretched out his talents and yanked them from the vision, just as the beings in that place beyond began to convulse and their hearts began to stop. Once more, the Shrike stoppered up her ears and mind with his own arcane art to deafen and blind the voices and visions from beyond the grave

He held up a hand, coated in her blood that dribbled from his fingers, and pressed it to her lips to still her sobbing.

“Shh. You have done well.”

The Shrike examined the scarlet rivulets on his fingers for a moment, then he licked away the blood, savoring the warm, coppery, and biting tang.

Keres