Oh great Kein, father of war. Grant us blades to carve our enemies, and fangs to tear their flesh. Let our burning blood blaze a path to the throne of God, so we may strike him down.
-Prayer to Kein, Titan of War
“I can’t believe you live here,” Grey growled, looking up at the narrow storage space that was Zelith’s room at the temple. Zelith murmured in response, hugging close to Grey, the wolf woman running her hands through the Witchblood’s hair.
“Not that bad,” Zelith replied eventually. “Better here than with…parents.”
Grey’s eyes found Zelith’s face, eyes narrowing.
“What did they do?” she growled, a snarl on her face as Zelith shook her head.
“Long time ago. It’s…they had to get out of the Swordlands,” Zelith said softly, tracing a line on Grey’s biceps. “A mage here wanted research subjects, and I was…I fit. He studied what he needed to know, my parents had passage and pay to get a house.”
Grey frowned, her eyes following to the dissection scars on Zelith’s arms, the ones she had never wanted to dig into her frown only deepened.
“They sold you to be cut apart?”
Grey could feel her body surging with heat as the fur started to grow up from her claws, the change only stopping as Zelith hugged close to her stomach.
“They didn’t know. Not until later. Not until the samples got more…extreme,” Zelith said quietly. “Looking at bones was one thing, but…well. Once I came up sick because I was missing part of my liver, they had questions. Pulled me out then.”
Grey growled in her chest again, pulling Zelith closer before she frowned.
Liver. Blood. Bones.
“…Did he take other samples?” Grey said. “Anything else?”
Zelith frowned, looking self conscious as she reached a hand up, pulling back her lower lip to show a tooth that was just slightly discolored, whiter then the others around it.
Grey’s mind was racing as she stared at Zelith, standing up.
“Who. Who the hell is this person? Where is he?”
As Zelith looked over, standing up and wrapping a sheet around herself.
“I…Oleander Lasair,” the Witchblood said softly. “Why? You can’t just hunt him down, it’s…it wasn’t illegal.”
“Because. Liver, blood, bones, teeth…that’s ritual shit. Old blood magic. Me and the old bear hunted blood mages back in the Swordlands. And if this shit was taking the parts from a witchblood…demon shit.”
She growled, snarling as she started pulling on more armor.
“I knew it smelled like you. Lasair’s the one. Helping the demon,” Grey snarled. “Hiding it. Using parts from you, any others he got them from. Blood mage.“
As the wolf began to moved off the bed to the door, Zelith started pulling another of her tunics on, her mind moving quickly as she tried to wrap it around what Grey was saying.
“And…you’re sure?” Zelith said, looking at Grey.
As the Sunvaar looked over her shoulder, the glint of fangs was clear, her claws still fully bestial.
“Bastard deserves a visit,” Grey snarled. “Being right is a bonus.”
As the noon sun drifted down, an elderly man sat at his work station, a scalpel resting between his fingers like a pencil. The home was a humble one, on the surface, but the old Lasair House had once spread under the now-fallen West Quarter, a true noble home of Old Stinjul. As he made a few quick incisions, the gurgle of the subject muffled as he clicked his tongue and collected a sample of red hair.
With a lazy flick of the wrist, a chute opened and the body fell out of sight. A sickening thunk sounded up from below, the howl of something in the dark greeting him before the door slammed shut.
Lasair pulled out a handkerchief from a carefully embroidered jacket pocket, beginning to walk down the stairs, through the shifting halls of his family estate. Doors slid out of sight as he walked past, bricks rotating and cutting off alleys and dead-ends, smoke from the fires that had claimed the quarter drifting out still as the smell of brimstone grew stronger.
Opening the door of the inner chamber, the elderly man was greeted by a large room, almost like a stage and space for an audience. Sitting in the middle of the room, a chunk of bone jutted out from below, like a large claw.
The fingerbone of Mindol, and across it, a red, pulsing substance like amber was spreading like a tumorous growth through it, almost as tall as a giant.
As he stood, a pair of clawed hands draped themselves over his shoulders, blue and black, like they’d been carved from sapphire and burnt wood.
“More for me? You shouldn’t have, dear,” the low, hoarse voice he knew so well whispered in his ear. A face like a human’s rested on his shoulder, a pair of blood-red lips smiling as a third clawed hand reached up from the side, clasping around the samples he’d taken. “Ah, red. You still have a taste for that, then. Naughty boy.”
“Don’t mock me, Esme,” Oleander said, his voice even. “Must keep up appearances. My late wife had red hair, so you must as well.”
The demoness laughed, pushing past him and vanishing behind the fingerbone, a mask-like face emerging from the side, eyes burning like blue suns, a crown of horns and flame around her head.
“Soon. Soon there will be no more hiding. Not for me, and not for you. When the rot spreads through these streets…”
“Our dreams will be reality,” Oleander finished, staring into the flames.
Esme Brighstone grinned widely, too widely, at that, as the red growth began to spread, up, towards the unsuspecting streets of Stinjul.
Strike The Horizon 