Chapter 22

Sana lay in the middle of her foster family's basement, gurgling and choking, blood pouring from her nose and ears to join the crimson fluid now saturated on her skin and in her clothes. She coughed, and another rivet of blood was expelled from her throat.

Her opponent loomed over her, smiling from ear to ear, his own clothes and skin saturated in red much like hers. She went from standing to a broken mass of shattered bones and internal hemorrhages from which she couldn't fully regenerate in a single move. Sana couldn't even speak, able only to cough up more of her own blood as he dragged her broken body down into the darkness with strength augmented from his magic. There he drew a ritual circle in blood whose permutations she couldn't even begin to fathom before placing her square in the center of it.

Caleb removed his jacket and wiped his face clean, summoning an ornate dagger to his hand with the blood he removed. With his other hand outstretched, he began to channel glowing green light into his palm. Bones mended, flesh melted with flesh, her body writhed on the floor in agony as he forcefully stitched her back together. The pain was immense, worse than anything she'd felt in her life. Sana could feel every bone break and then re-break to accommodate each other.

"Such amusing expressions you make, gurgling on your own blood, that look of unbridled pain in your eyes." He snickered under his breath in sadistic glee. "Please forgive me for enjoying this. It's not the pain so much as the surprise I cherish most. Because it's clear you're really not used to this. Losing so spectacularly to someone like me."

She didn't even realize how shattered her body was until she had it so unceremoniously put back together again in such a crude, unforgiving manner. Sana wanted to beg him for mercy but found she couldn't. He'd melted her lips together with a flesh-sculpting spell. Her arms and legs, likewise, were useless weights now. Either due to the circle, he'd placed her in or the nerves he'd severed while putting her back together.

Either way, it was hopeless.

"You see, this is my absolute favorite part," he insisted. "The moment your mind starts racing, trying to figure out at what point it all went so wrong." A psychotic grin spread across his lips. "What amuses me even more, is that you're never going to get an answer to that question."

She tried once more in vain to speak from her fused lips.

"Oh, and don't think for one second I'm gonna undo that," he assured bluntly. "I have neither the desire nor the energy to listen to any useless begging or groveling. If you truly desired to live, you would have shown greater awareness for just how easy it is to die. Even for beings like us, as much as I'm sure you'd rather not think about it."

Caleb lowered himself down next to her, and she felt his blade bite into her wrist, draining her blood once more.

"Maybe it's not very 'cultist' of me to gain no pleasure in hearing the miserable pleas for mercy from my defeated quarry. But I've often found in these moments and you don't truly regret your actions. You simply regret that they didn't work in your favor. Had the shoe been on the other foot, I'm all, but certain my pleas for mercy would have fallen on deaf ears. So why the hell should I waste my time listening to yours?"

Her body began to levitate into the air as blood flowed freely from her wrist. It began to collect in a pool within the circle.

"It all just sort of devolves from there, anyway," he insisted before running his tongue along the bloodied blade. "Just a blur of sweating, screaming, crying, drama." He started mockingly imitating her voice. "You can't do this to me. I'm an Elder. I'm a Rosalian. Blah, blah, blah. Boo, hoo, hoo." He snickered and shook his head vehemently. "After a while, it just leaves you with a headache."

He slashed her other wrist and then her carotid artery as well. His face contorted into something demonic. Something clearly inhuman. To think this bastard really did it. He'd gone where no Blood Sorcerer would ever dare to tread, casting his humanity aside and performing the forbidden ritual.

Kala Marbh Carne. The cannibalization of Blood Cultist flesh.

As she watched her blood spill into the lake at her feet, all Sana could think about was how this boy was so far beyond anything any of them had ever accomplished before. But how? How was it he could still retain his sanity after everything he had done? To eat the flesh of a Blood Cultist, to imbibe of vitae without the blessings of C'thadra was to invite corruption into your very soul, mutating your flesh into something truly monstrous. Among the Native American tribes in the US, such a creature was known as a wendigo. In Japan, they were known as jikininki.

But to the Kin of C'thadra, they were simply known as the unger. Cultists who had consumed the flesh of their kin, twisting into demonically possessed creatures in the process. Abominations meant to be put to the torch.

Somehow this child had not turned! Even after committing the single most hideous act imaginable. This monster...he ate his Chapter's Acolyte while she lay in torpor! One of the Thirteen! The original disciples of C'thadra herself and the source of their unholy power!

How?! How was he still in control?!

She finally stopped bleeding. Sana had been drained dry, yet he kept her alive. The pain was gone, at least. Something she was grateful for. He was keeping her breathing through nothing but his own obscene power, and she found herself torn as a result. On the one hand, this whelp didn't deserve such dark gifts, such sublime potency. He was seventeen! A child! A fetus! Barely off his mother's tit, and already he's claimed the blessings of an Acolyte? She spent over two centuries of her life trying to reach such a goal—others among her Kin for far longer than that.

And yet, with this bitter pill came a very real sense of curiosity. Even if these were her last moments, to witness the powers of an Acolyte was to be touched by the unholy in its purest form. His arrogance was a beast unto itself, and it was clear the child enjoyed showing off, whether he would admit that or not. He stitched her mouth shut not just to drown out her feeble attempts to beg but so that he could work undisturbed in front of a captivated audience.

And captivated she was. For now, Sana was content to float and quietly watch as he desired. The blood on the floor began to hum with a possessed life of its own. The pool began to rise, like a spire of flowing vitae, commanded by the hematic potency of a true master. It took on a savage, beastial outline but was not an animal that existed on the earth; rather, some form of demon spirit conjured to exist within a temporary liquid body.

It was a summoning. Not an invocation or a projection. She was witnessing an actual corporeal summoning! This truly was an Acolytes power!

"Ahf' ymg' ah gotha," the blood demon spoke in a guttural unblessed language she couldn't hope to comprehend.

"Gn'thrak hul b'lzak," the sorcerer responded, using some unknown medium to pronounce the syllables.

He was commanding it. That's what this boy was doing! No bartering required, no sacrifice expected in return, nothing. A simple command to a demon of the howling void and nothing more. She didn't deserve this. Sana didn't deserve to see this sort of power with her own two eyes.

It slithered through the air slowly, like a serpent of liquid, before splitting off into three lesser streams. It halted at her open wrists and slashed throat before rocketing through her veins under the authority of the one who commanded the circle. Sana began to convulse violently, the demonic entity within her body taking everything from her, every last bit of power she'd come to possess in the two centuries she'd been a practitioner of Blood Sorcery.

She fell to her knees, no longer in control of her own body. As he took her by the chin, Sana's stitched lips were violently torn open as something was pulled from her being. Only then did she realize what the boy had just done. It wasn't just her vitae he was taking away, but the sum total of her very being—the essence of all life.

The entity before her opened his inhuman jaw wide, unhinged like a python. From behind rows of shark teeth, in the very back of his gullet, she could see it. A bright blue light, the true nature of his existence. Joyous tears fell down her cheeks. It was beautiful. So unbelievably beautiful.

From the back of her own throat, it sprang forth, a stream of blue mist, the breath. The true essence of her very existence. Her power drained away, and soon the rest of her would follow suit. Finally, she understood! Finally, she could see what this creature truly was!

I'm ready, Master. She called into his mind. Take me. I accept your divine embrace.

And then she fell, fell through her own body, through her own mind, as she was spirited away towards the bright blue light in the sky. All her life, she had searched for the purest expression of beauty. At long last, she had found it.

Caleb swallowed the bright light inside her, whereupon the lights in her eyes flickered and died. Her heart stopped dead in her chest, and she collapsed onto the circle, lifeless at last.

Seriously though. Why do souls taste like chicken broth? He pondered to himself for what had to be the millionth time before shrugging his shoulders. That may be one philosophical quandary that he never got an answer for.

Oh well. At least he could finally have dessert. And what a dessert it was. As much as Caleb enjoyed his cooking, as much as he loved preparing gourmet works of art from his victims...

...there was nothing like eating it fresh. Nothing.

Like a rabid wolf, he attacked the body, tearing into flesh, snapping bones, gorging and glutting in a furious frenzy of total abandonment, the monster within fully giving way as the mask was torn clean from his face.

A light shined on his body, and he stopped. Only for a moment, however, before finishing the bite in his hands. Caleb turned towards the source of the light, his eyes narrowing with both suspicion and curiosity in equal measure, licking his fingers one by one as he stood back up to address the one who bore it.

"You're not someone I expected to see," he observed, a wary edge in his voice. Truth be told, he was more than a little surprised to see her. Though not nearly as surprised as she clearly was at that moment.

"What are you doing here, Akane?"