Willing Sacrifice
A sickly yellow star carved an arc through the night sky like a dagger drawn across the world’s throat. It was an omen, the herald of prophecy, the fulfillment of a secret promise between myself and fate. None but I knew the truth. None but I had heard the ravings of the mad monk chained forever beneath the ocean’s waves. I was anointed by destiny. I had been chosen.
Wind whistled around me where I perched in the cathedral’s apse, hidden beneath the broken timbers of a rotted roof. There was a storm coming, but more than just a storm; the world’s fulcrum was about to shift. It had been foretold in a prophecy older than I, older than the shattered church, even older yet than the ancient trees outside which creaked like an old man’s spine.
I oft wondered: who had been the first to speak of this moment? Was it Elphesius, babbling wisdom and madness in the abyssal trench? I had learned from him, but perhaps there was another. Perhaps some time-lost prophet had seen the portents of the heavens and known of my coming before I was even yet born. A remarkable thought, but I did not dwell long on it; on the altar below, my captive had begun to cry.
The boy was young, old enough to walk and talk and know something had gone terribly wrong. He was the son of some petty local lord. I had stolen him from his father’s lands where I had found him sitting beneath a tree plucking legs from a spider. He was small enough to carry with a single hand, weak enough that I could ignore his most frenzied blows. An ideal sacrifice, if only he was willing.
Prophecy was rarely clear, but on that point it was certain: the offerings for my coming kingship could not be coerced. They were required to arrive of their own free will and as such, the child was merely bait. I had let him scream loud and long as I carried him up the hills; the villagers below saw me and knew my path. They would not save him themselves, but they would spread the word. Hunger for coin and favor would bring me my willing sacrifices.
Perhaps fate did not need a nudge? I gazed down at the child. His eyes were red and watery, his garments soaked with mud, and his blond hair an unruly mop. Perhaps destiny helps those who help themselves. Had Elphesius seen that too? Where he hung from chains in the briny depths, an apostate to a forgotten church, had he seen me climb the manor’s walls and scuttle through its woods? I considered that as I watched the child weep and wriggle, bound both hand and foot and tied to the age-cracked altar. Were my own plots preordained? This question made me shiver. No, I thought. I am free. It is the star which follows me.
The child’s wailing waned and he found his words. “Please let me go,” he begged the darkness in which he knew I lurked. I said nothing. “I’m the prince. My father can give you gold! Gems! Other boys even, there are plenty among the peasants. Eat them, please!”
In my promised future there is no need for gold, I thought. And the whole world will be my feast.
“You don’t understand,” he continued. “I’m important. One day I’ll be the king of all—”
Both his words and my attention died at the sound of movement. I cursed myself for listening to him, for allowing my focus to wander. I was unprepared. In the cathedral’s narthex, the crackling sounds of stone and glass underfoot heralded my prey. I inhaled the humid air. I smelled my prey. A man was coming; I caught his scent amongst the first drops of rain. For a moment, I fretted. What if he’s alone? I thought. I need two. The prophecy is clear.
“Ziltar!”
From his voice alone, I knew the man was old; his words crackled like the pebbles beneath his boots. I saw him a moment later, emerging from the long shadows of the cathedral’s entry. He was too old to swing a blade, with sunken purple pits around his eyes and wrinkles like chasms. His grey hair was tied back and he wore a yellow robe with an emerald stole embroidered with the symbols of some human faith. I cared not which. My ascent would obliterate every other church; I would feast on the forlorn priests of forgotten gods. Saliva ran down my jaws, another drip-drip-drip from the leaking roof.
“Over here!” cried the lordling child. “On the altar!”
The man walked cautiously along the nave. In the debris-strewn aisle between rotted pews, he held aloft a staff of silver. It flared white fire; I shrunk back into the shadows. “Yes, I can see you,” he said. “Now be silent.”
“Be kind to the boy,” said another. I startled. My six eyes searched the dark. I had not heard her come. Seen nothing. Smelled not a hint. “He’s had a day.”
She stood almost directly below me. How? The woman was as large as a bear and covered in tattoos as black as night. Her tremendous frame made the pelts on her shoulders seem small, although the beasts from which they came were themselves monsters. By contrast, the spear on her back looked like a fragile little thing, a twig with an iron tip, but the sight of it made my twin hearts race with fear. Those hundred little chips on the blade? Each marked a life taken. The weapon stank of death. These were not the sacrifices I wanted.
“Don’t!” The elder snapped at her, forcing her to withdraw hands reaching for the child’s—Ziltar’s—bindings. “How many times have I told you, Ingris?”
She snarled. “They’re ropes, old man. I smell no magic.”
“And you wouldn’t,” he said. He shuffled down the aisle, stepping carefully and lifting his robe—torn and muddy as it was from the worst snarls of the ruins. “You haven’t the skill for it.”
“Piss on you, Ult,” she said. “Hurry up.”
“Be careful,” urged Ziltar. “The ropes feel strange.”
Good, I thought. Be slow. The star is not yet ready.
The woman’s face curled into a smile. “He’s old and frail. He couldn’t rush if he tried.”
Ult snorted. Leaning heavily on his staff, he climbed the last two steps to the altar. “I should let you try,” he said. “Burn off your hands with some godforsaken curse, then I’ll have the reward myself.”
Ingris held out her arms. They were as thick as a tree’s limbs. “And who would carry you back across the ford? The storm’s driven the waters mad. You’d drown before you touched a single coin.”
Ult ignored her. He was right to be wary; I had tied the knots with more than hemp. Even though I had expected brave peasants with swords—not these hunters—I congratulated myself on plans well-laid. Humans could be dangerous in sufficient numbers or with improbable skill, and I did not have the luxury of infinite patience. The sacrifices needed to die when the star reached its zenith.
My eyes flitted upwards. I checked the star’s position. Its growing light battled against the storm whipped up around it; one moment, the star was hidden behind swirling green-grey clouds, the next, its illumination cut through like a heaven-sent spear. The rain came on in earnest now, whipping against the church’s sundered roof. It was nearly time.
I shifted downwards. Claw by claw, pad by pad, six limbs and eighteen claws across stone and plaster. I was careful; I made not a sound. Yet the hulking woman looked up. I froze. The priest raised his blazing staff and shadows shifted in the apse.
He raised his voice over the storm. “What is it?” he asked.
Ingris stared directly towards me. Her eyes were as dark as rich soil, as sharp as the spear on her back. She saw nothing. It was impossible. I was wrapped in manifold darkness; I crawled beneath the world’s skin. Her nostrils flared. She frowned.
“There’s a bad feeling on the wind,” Ingris said. Thunder rumbled in the near distance. “It’s a wicked storm, and out of season.”
The priest frowned as well. Ult squinted up at the sky, watched where rain leaked between broken timbers and trickled into pools on the cathedral’s floor. He sniffed the air, but he smelled nothing but petrichor and damp wood. “Worry less about the weather,” he said, “and more about who brought him here. I don’t want any surprises while I work!”
“They left,” Ziltar said.
“Who?” asked Ingris.
Ziltar’s face was wet with rain and shined beneath passing rays of the star’s light. “Masked men,” he said. “They wore dark armor and had rough hands.”
I paused where I clung to the wall. Has the star driven the child mad? I watched the strange light dance across his face. Or perhaps he is simply daft. I smiled. Little matter. A boon either way. They will not expect me.
Ingris chuckled as she freed her spear. Even lackadaisical she was quick; the weapon spun in her hands as though weightless. “Probably fled when they saw me,” she said proudly. “We bring no ransom, only blood.” She waved her spear at the shadows. Unknowingly, at me. The priest’s spell-light danced on the weapon’s tip. “Bandits have no taste for battle. Cowards all.”
“Brigands don’t weave magic knots,” Ult said.
She laughed, twirled where she stood—utterly unconcerned—and began to pace a circle around Ult and Ziltar. Even on the gravel of broken masonry, Ingris did not make a noise. “Cultists then,” she suggested. “Sniveling, slavish men. I don’t fear them either!”
“I don’t care who you fear,” Ult said. He bent over Ziltar and turned his attention towards the ropes. “Be wary anyways.”
With one withered hand held an inch above a knot, the priest mumbled beneath his breath. His magic began. Low, distant bells rang in the far reaches of my mind. He invoked power from a faraway place, curried favor with a god no longer worthy of the title. A tiny purple sliver—a barb I had plucked from a vile creature in a deep place—rose from the rope, quivered, then disintegrated.
Ult gave his partner a warning look. “Cultists can still kill you. These ropes are full of spines. Poison, doubtless.” Then he glanced at the child, who was as still as a corpse. “Don’t twitch a muscle until I tell you.”
With only a moment’s glance at Ult, Ingris continued her slow loop. “I fear no man, I fear no beast,” she said. “No poison’s so foul as that gruel you call stew.”
“Hah-hah,” said Ult mirthlessly. He pulled one barb then another from the rope. “You’ve grown complacent since you took Betharion’s head,” he said. “One dead knight and you think you’re invincible.”
Even with her back to me as she circled the altar, I heard Ingris’ sneer. “Confident,” she corrected him. “Not complacent. Don’t lecture me. I’m not the one whose coin goes up his nose.”
Ult straightened as much as his crooked back would allow. He forgot about the knots around Ziltar. “Are we doing this again?” he asked. “Inhalation of the yaavi powder is a sacred rite. The source of my divine power and—”
“Divine!” laughed Ingris. She bobbed her spear playfully in the air, gesturing at her partner. “I remember the man you stabbed with a broken bottle when he shorted you.”
“An offense to the Veiled God,” he said.
Their argument continued, but I blocked it out. I had to be careful. The woman’s senses were keen. I moved limb by cautious limb, my torso nearly pressed against the floor, barely an inch between damp stone and my chitin-covered chest. Magic alone would not shield me from her gaze; I could not disturb a pebble or drag a single claw. Ingris’ path brought her near me again. I froze just beyond the ring of Ult’s unnatural light.
I decided then: I would kill him first. His magic worried me; it did not care for the thickness of my shell. He was old and frail. It would not take more than a single swipe to erase his threat. Yet I hesitated, indulged in the strange emotion of doubt. What if these are not my sacrifices? I looked to the heavens for reassurance. The peak is minutes away. There can be no others.
My gaze turned back on Ingris. She has only a pointed stick. I watched her walk past where I laid in wait. She is only human. It did not matter how many notches her spear had, nor what knight she had felled. No mortal could stand against me in single combat. They lacked the speed and skill and—above all—the hands. There was no martial secret in all the continents of Teth which gave a human extra limbs. I will kill him, then overwhelm her and tear her apart.
A sheet of rain and hail whipped across the cathedral’s roof, dousing all of us with wayward droplets thrown through missing shingles. Ingris began another loop around the altar. I moved as she moved, footfall for footfall, two silent hunters in synchrony. Each step took her further from me. Each step took me closer towards Ult. Lightning flashed overhead. Illumination danced in the humid air. The star was nearly overhead. For a final time, I recited the verse of the prophet in the depths:
With the coming of the pale star,
a dawning of a new age:
two hearts emptied,
willing footsteps painted red,
With spilled life,
With light above,
A new crown fashioned,
A cruel zenith,
A kingdom for a thousand generations.
I had spent a century in the thrall of those words. Their fulfillment was my obsession: the moment those gurgled words had left Elphesius’ lips, drifted upwards through the dark water as bubbles like diamonds, I had known my purpose. I would do—had done—anything for the prophecy’s fulfillment. I had debased myself in its pursuit. My kind yearned to hunt. To kill. To feast on flesh and fat still sticky and warm. Yet I had set my hunger aside. I had done unnatural things: I had stolen human trinkets, books of astrology and tubes of iron with eyes of glass. I had watched the stars and charted their course. Alone in a tower forgotten by its long-dead lords, I had hunted not meat but knowledge. At last, after so many, many years, my investment had come due.
When the next peal of thunder waned, the humans’ words came back into focus. “—and who are you to talk?” Ult waved his staff in the air. Light shifted all around us. “You spend your coin on stupid, pretty men who amuse you only for a night! Dozens of them, Ingris! You embarrass us in every town, we leave humiliated!”
The pelts on Ingris’ shoulders bounced as she laughed. “Satisfied,” she corrected him. “Men are selfish and quick to tire, so I must purchase them in bulk.” A tremendous grin split her face. She was having fun. “How many greybeards like you would it take to amuse me for an hour? A hundred?”
“Don’t be crude!” snapped Ult.
“Would any of you survive it?” she teased. “With your feeble hearts and shriveled—”
“I’m trying to work!” Ult said. He bent back over Ziltar and furrowed his brow. His voice became a liturgical drone, louder and stronger than it was before, rising over both the storm and Ingris’ taunting. “In the name of the Mother Beyond, the power behind the Veil, the eightfold throne upon—”
With clenched jaws I forced his words out of my mind. They were insidious things. I focused on everything but his spell: I moved with the crash of thunder, felt the pressure of my pads against rain-slick stone, watched Ingris’ pace further away. I could not be distracted by petty magic, not as destiny called. The star rose. My claws grasped the ground. My muscles tensed. It was time!
I leapt.
Ziltar screamed. It was too late to turn back; I was in motion, a blur of black-purple chitin and reaching limbs. I caught Ult unaware. The old man was slow to look up. Ingris was not; the scream was all the warning she needed. She spun and extended, the end of the haft of her spear clenched in a single hand. Her reach was incredible! A lightning bolt of arm and armament flashed across the dais, over the altar—mere inches from the child’s face—and past Ult’s startled form.
My front-left limb stretched for the priest’s throat. Claws flashed in the stormlight. Ingris’ speartip slammed into me—finding a joint in my shell—and buried itself between shoulder and abdomen as I slashed at Ult. Too low! His chest tore open from collarbone to sternum, but Ingris was already pushing me backwards, throwing her weight behind the spear and driving me away. I shrieked. Ingris vaulted the altar, sixteen stone of fury behind the barb in my chest, and launched me away into the aisle.
As I fell, Ult staggered back with one hand clasped to his wound. He was stunned. Half of his stole fluttered to the ground. The cut was not deep enough. While I hit the ground and rolled backwards through the ruined pews, rotten wood breaking beneath me, I screamed a litany of curses. With a twist of my segmented body, I righted myself as my claws found purchase on the stone. I was going to make them suffer.
“An abyssiate!” Ingris yelled. All the teasing mirth was gone from her voice. Positioned between me and the altar, she tracked my eyes with her speartip. “Ult!” She did not dare look away. “Ult—souls beyond, greybeard—help me!”
I would not give him the chance. I charged. The woman was strong—perhaps stronger than me—and my equal in weight. But she had only two arms and one spear. I had six limbs with claws of jagged blades, a mouth of razors, and a tongue whose touch meant rotting death. No mortal was my equal, and fate was my shield.
She jabbed three times as quick as the wind, but I was faster; my muscles were made for the pressure of the deep ocean. I dodged sideways, down, and around. Wood scattered beneath me. Ziltar screamed at the priest, urged him to rise. I moved on my hindlimbs, slashing and probing with the other four. Ingris backpedaled and swept her spear in fending arcs. She was more agile than her size suggested and moved with a dancer’s grace, but she was still only human. The result was as inexorable as the path of the star, as certain as the mathematics I had taught myself from stolen tomes.
“Ult!” she shrieked. Fear was in her voice now.
Her spear skittered across my chitin and clipped one of my eyes. The watery green orb exploded like an overripe fruit. I howled, but it did not matter—with my ascension, I would have no need of eyes. I would be beyond flesh. My right forelimb slashed her ankle; leather britches and boot and skin and muscle all yielded to my claws. Blood sprayed across the stone. My excitement surged, remaining eyes dilated. Ingris staggered.
The blow took her balance. Her next dodge was too slow. My tongue wrapped her right wrist; its barnacles rent flesh and left toxin behind. Ingris screamed and twisted and kicked, trying to force me back with her wounded leg. It must have hurt terribly. She angled her spear and drove it in, finding a soft spot beneath my neck. I spat blue blood, grabbed her, and dragged her down.
We tumbled on the altar’s stairs, each wounded and howling and slick with blood and rain. Ingris levered herself onto the spear and put her weight onto it; the tip and a hand’s length of its haft plunged within my abdomen. Something important burst within me. I should not have grappled with her. She was too strong, relentless, unyielding—right until the moment my midlimbs tore open her guts.
Ingris sagged. She made a soft noise, like a balloon emptied of air, and tried to hold her organs in with a single forearm. I threw her off of me. One more blow for the kill, and then—
“Do it!” Ziltar yelled.
Ult’s voice rose from a gurgled whisper and found sudden strength: “—and to the void, condemn you!”
I did not even have a moment to panic. A funeral bell rang somewhere between the worlds, a golden instrument as tall as a mountain, its metal clapper swung by blind giants. The sound shook the plane between places, a deafening roar, an invisible wave, and it raced outwards from the dominion of Ult’s hidden god. It struck me. It broke me. My claws shattered. My limbs twisted and pieces of my shell cracked and fell away. My organs ruptured. I writhed where I lay, blind to all but pain and the terrible, echoing ring. The world went white and loud and still.
The first thing I felt was weight on my lower abdomen and the second, a twisting, piercing sensation between my ribs. The pain was distant; I was numb. But it grew moment by moment, an rhythmic agony between one rib then the next. The pain called me to waking. I opened my eyes.
Ingris was on top of me. Her face was an agonized mask. Her infected arm—its skin already purpled with rotting blisters and peeling away—did a sloppy job of keeping her guts in place; some of her intestine slipped out below her blood-slick fingers, dripping gore on my shattered body. In her other hand she held a long slender dagger, once white as the bone from which it was made but since painted with my blood. She drove it into me again. I shifted beneath her, croaked, and tried to find my strength. She was seeking my hearts.
“Higher!” Ult said. Even his firmest exhortation was weak. Breathless. He sat slumped against the altar’s base, his face as pale as a corpse. Whatever strength blood loss had not sapped from him, his casting had stolen away. His Veiled God had demanded a toll. “Before it…” He shivered where he laid and coughed feebly. “Before it stirs.”
“It’s already dead!” Ziltar insisted. There was a panicked, urgent whine in his voice. “Let me out! Save your friend, he’s bleeding!”
“Child…” Ult did not have the strength to argue.
Ziltar didn’t relent. “He’s going to die if you don’t help him!”
Her knife paused. Its tip wavered where it sat pressed against exposed flesh between my ribs. One more thrust, and she would kill me. The blade was only inches from my hearts and a sudden, ignominious death. My awareness grew by the second, but it was not fast enough. She was going to kill me. The prophecy…
“HELP HIM!” yelled Ziltar with desperation only a child could summon.
Ingris didn’t speak. She hadn’t the strength for it; her knife wavered in her shaking arm. The moment’s hesitation was all I needed. Beneath the blinding light of my star, I found my strength. I am destined! My midlimbs grasped her knife-arm. She startled. It was too late. I am ascendant! My forelimbs sought her face and the broken shards of my claws found her eyes. I pushed. With a squelch of bloody white rupture, I took her sight. With a jerk of her neck and a crack of bone, I took her life. There was no noise left in her; no final pleas or defiant quips. Ingris sagged, slumped, and fell off of me. Her knife clattered away. I have been chosen!
All I had to do was reach the altar and quash the priest. A simple feat; he was all but dead. But so was I. Ingris’ spear was in my lung and Ult’s spell had broken the rest of me. My hearts still beat, but could not do so for long. Death loomed like the ocean’s deepest cliff, an endless fall waiting for my grip to falter.
I clawed my way forward, dragged my broken body across the stones. A smear of blood and worse painted the path behind me. Step by step, I pulled myself up onto the dais. I was a broken thing leaving pieces of myself behind. Even then, I did not doubt. I heaved myself over the final edge. It is poetic to be brought low before I am raised up.
Ult barely stirred where he laid against the altar’s base. The old man’s breaths were shallow things. His yellow robes were stained brown with blood and his staff sat fallen beside him. He did not have the strength to cast again. All he could do was follow me with wide eyes; he was as a lamb staring at the impending blade.
High above, the star blazed with otherworldly fire. I realized only then: the storm was passed or we sat within its eye. The rain had ceased, the winds slackened. Every surface of the crumbled church was alight in a strange yellow-emerald luminescence, an impossible shade, a sparkling color which almost possessed a life of its own. It was as though we were transfixed in the eyes of a god, not one of the humans’ long-fled deities, but a true and present power. Power which would be mine. I raised one twisted forelimb towards the sky, above Ult’s head. I was a supplicant beneath fate, and I basked in the midnight dawn. One strike and—
A shadow blocked out the star. The child sat up on the altar, his legs dangling over its edge, his face interposed between me and the beckoning light. He smiled at me, his expression as tranquil as a lake on a windless summer morn. My mind ran wild. Ult had not untied him. I tried to speak, but only frothing blood fell from my mouth. I do not understand, I thought. How?
With the booted heel of his little foot, Ziltar pressed against Ult’s head until the priest toppled to the side. He leaned down over me, an eclipse of my promised fate, and reached out to hold my cheek. “It’s your time,” he said tenderly.
Finally, my lungs were empty of blood. I sputtered, wheezed, and spoke. “The prophecy…” I said. My limbs trembled beneath me. I was on the verge of collapse. “The star…”
Ziltar stroked my broken face, then he laughed, loud and high, a child’s tittering at a joke. He looked up at the star, composed himself, and shook his head. “Oh,” he said. “You misunderstood.”
My limbs gave out. I fell from his touch and hit the floor. Inside me, my hearts shuttered and failed. As a fog gripped my thoughts, my gaze—the only power I had left—turned upwards.
Behind Ziltar, the star flared. The shadows of his face deepened until all I saw were the whites of his teeth as he grinned a wide and wild smile. Above us on the roof, an inexplicable, irregular thud-thud rattled the remaining shingles. I did not understand. It was not hail. A crow’s corpse crashed on the stone beside me, a mess of blood and bone no less gruesome than my own.
“Do you see?” asked Ziltar.
I croaked. The world swam in shadows, but a singular light cut through even the darkness of death: the star was gone from the sky. It sat on the child’s brow as a crown, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, an intricate, impossible piece of art writ in flames. Even as my sight failed, its image burned in my retinas, a white then purple afterglow of fate’s promise.
“Poor little thing,” Ziltar said. He sounded distant. “It was never you.”
Dan Rohn
Daniel Rohn is a lawyer and author who lives who lives in northern Maryland with his wife, a menagerie of pets, and a maddening compulsion to write weird stories. When he isn’t writing he’s usually found at his other set of keys, practicing a strange fusion of jazz piano and heavy metal lyrics. He’s a graduate of the University of Maryland with degrees in Law and Philosophy, and his professional work focuses on culture change and continuous improvement.