Thorn reached down and grabbed Catus Decanius, throwing him hard against the wall so that he was in an upright, seated position. Catus grunted but could do no more. Thorn had gagged him with a strip torn from the procurator’s own sleeping robe so that he wouldn’t have to endure the annoyance of Catus pleading for his life during the return to the witch’s house.
Squatting, Thorn touched his hand to Catus’ head and, with an almost pious look on his face, as if in mockery of some sacred religious ritual, he recited an incantation. Catus shook as if he were having a seizure. His face turned purple, and he foamed at the mouth.
Bunduica moved forward one step, then stopped.
As if in response to her apprehension, Thorn told her, “He is not dying. Quite the contrary. Now he cannot die until his body is all gone. Each part of him that you sever will die, but as long as any part of him is left intact, he will feel pain. And so this will go until he is no more.”
Thorn grinned as he saw understanding in Bunduica’s eyes.
“There is more.” The god walked to the fireplace mantle and took one of the silver rings with the rune on it from the wax-covered, withered dead man’s hand. He turned and slipped it onto Bunduica’s forefinger. Thorn then reached down and with his clawed finger and tore Catus’ right eye from the socket. Blood spurted onto the cottage floor as Catus jerked and shook in agony.
“Hold his eye in the hand on which you wear the ring,” said the rune.
Bunduica took Catus Decanius’ eye in her hand. As she did, there was a swirling of darkness before her, and a window opened in the midst of the room.
“This ring will help you translate the language in the book. Each severed part of a human’s anatomy opens a door by which knowledge may be procured and wonders may be experienced. Do you wonder what is happening and what will become of Catus’ henchwoman? Squeeze the eye gently in your hand and look into the window.”
A rich, purple-hued pattern pulsated, then exploded inside the strange window. It was replaced by a clear image of Helga lying in a bed. Her eyes were rheumy as she beheld sights not of this world, as if she were dying. Her tanned face had turned a pale, ashen grey. Helga’s forehead was beaded with sweat. Two servants of Catus’ household now tended to the amazon and wiped the sweat from her fevered brow. Her stomach was swollen as if she would explode. Her feet and legs were tied to the bed, and her mouth was opened in what could only be a scream. Suddenly her stomach exploded and a demonic head burst through.
Blood and offal struck the walls and covered the nearest servant. The servant woman who had been tending the amazon was screaming as she held her hands out and frantically tried to shake the demon’s blood from them. Helga, opened from the breastbone down, lay unmoving as everything that been inside her now lay steaming on either side of her. And still, the demon that had come from her struggled to move from the bed, awkwardly moving itself over her bound legs.
Bunduica had seen Helga die giving birth to a creature with the misshapen head of a monster, the face of a human, and the body of a horse. She saw it as it ran from the mansion of Catus Decanius, screaming its hatred at being born, as its eight horse’s legs carried it away into the night.
Thorn then slipped another ring on her middle finger. He drew one of the leaf-shaped daggers that Catus’ amazon had thrown at him and grabbed Catus by the wrist. Catus kicked and tried to get away. Tears rolled down his face. Thorn then severed Catus’ index finger near the base and squeezed the blood out of it. Catus, kicking and squirming, had vomited from the pain but had been forced to swallow most of it back down because of the gag in his mouth.
Thorn removed a jar of reddish liquid from behind some tubes on the shelf of witches’ tools and set it down on the table by the book. He then plopped Catus’ severed finger into the jar and told Bunduica, “Soak the index finger in the jar for three days, then dry it by the fire until it withers. Wear it about your neck when you wear this ring on your finger, and no human or animal eye will detect your presence. The rest you may learn of your own accord, as I have provided you with the book and the instruments.”
Bunduica held out her hand and gazed wide-eyed in awe at the rings. A smile crept over her face. “Might you destroy the whole Roman army and the emperor, too?”
Thorn shook his great head. “I am a god of the old world. As I have told you, the new gods feed on the pain, suffering, and sacrifice of human beings. I am an exception. I am the oldest god not to have fallen into oblivion. There is no greater morsel for me than feeding on the very essence of another god. The stronger the god, the greater the hunt, and the greater the feast.”
He continued, “It is a new era. Many young gods are being born. There is an upstart god worshipped by a tribe far from here, in the east. This tribe is called the Hebiru. Almost one hundred years ago, the Hebiru god sent forth a son. The god is a war god, but his son preaches peace as a facade to attract and enslave the masses. Over fifty years ago, the Romans put this man to death because of the trouble he caused them. In the years to come, the Romans unknowingly will pave the way for the upstart war god of the Hebiru. Their cult will spread to the far corners of this world. As the faith in this god grows, so shall his strength grow. I will return one day, and I will slay him when the fruit is ripe for the harvest. Then there will be a feast fit for only such a king as myself.”
Bunduica remembered Suetonius. “There was a Roman general who was responsible for my mother’s death. He took the old druid’s sight. They burned his eyes out.”
Thorn grunted, whirled, and shoved a clawed hand through Catus’ chest. It made a squishy, tearing sound as he quickly withdrew Catus’ heart from behind his ribs. Blood sprayed all over the room. Catus, lying on the floor, coughed profusely and gasped as if he were dying. Thorn reassured the girl, “He won’t die. He can’t until he is all used up.” Thorn then squeezed the remaining blood from Catus’ heart and held it up to look at it closely. The heart formed into a glowing globe; in it, Thorn saw flashes of battle and wholesale death, and he saw Suetonius’ insane glare. The general’s face became that of a demonic woman with piercing evil eyes; then it flashed back to Suetonius’ grinning leer.
Thorn smiled, a look of pleasant surprise on his face, and he said, “Ashteroth!”
Bunduica cocked her head slightly to one side and gave Thorn an inquisitive look.
The rune told her, “Your people refer to her as Andraste.”
Bunduica’s face lit up. “My mother called on Andraste to grant her victory in her war against the Romans. She gave thousands of lives to Andraste on her bloody altars. But when my mother needed her most, this goddess turned her back on her.”
Thorn continued gazing into the glowing orb. “Andraste didn’t just turn her back on your mother. She clothed herself in the very flesh of the man who destroyed your mother. She now possesses Suetonius.”
Bunduica was stunned.
Before she spoke again, Thorn said to her, “Oh, yes! To drink the essence of one of the Ancients again. I am sure that you want to shell the nut that is hiding in that woman. Remember what I said about the hunter and how he wastes nothing valuable? Study the book.”
“I am the hunter?”
“You are the hunter, woman. Now… when Catus Decanius is no more than a stump, summon me again. I will take his Ka. That is when the great suffering shall begin.”
“His Ka?”
“The Ka is the spirit that leaves the body once it truly dies. Once I have his Ka, I will sever it into seven layers, the Ka still existing, but in turn branching off into the Ren, Sekhem, Akh, Bau, Sheut, and Sekhu. Each will suffer its individual torments but, at the same time, each will bear the pain of the others, as well as feel all of the suffering at once again, as a whole. Study well the Book of Dead Runes. With the ring and the finger charm, you may come and go between this cottage at the edge of the world and the world of men.”
Bunduica asked him then, the rune, Thorn, this strange man or god-man whom she had, with Balor’s magic, call
ed down to exact her revenge on Rome, “Tell me… am I dead?”
“Dead?” he said to her.
She had spoken the runes, sounding the syllables perfectly. Under fear of the storm and the wild hunters, she had hurried to this witch’s cottage—whoever or whatever the witch had been. She had feared then that she had died and was only her spirit, whatever remained of herself. What had Balor said to her? “You will be working in magick and summoning forces the druids have shunned since before the great cataclysms of old.”
Thorn, sensing her concern or reading her mind, said to her in a voice now more placent or soothing, “No, Bunduica, you are not dead. Through your courage, you have earned your place. Here you may stay. You are the witch you first met here. Although this place borders on space and time, your accurst sun still rises here, and so I must be away. Know that I will return in four months, as you reckon time, on the eve of Brigid, in the heart of winter.”
And he was gone.
All of it—storm, boys, book, babe, hunters, witch, bloody vengeance—a dream, a dark dream, no more than that?
Feeling the strength that Thorn had left her with, Bunduica slowly turned and glared at the mutilated but yet living figure lying on the floor. She smiled, and the smile rose to her eyes and imbued them with a maddened glint.
She went to Catus and removed his gag.
He vomited everything within onto the cottage floor. Then he screamed, and he screamed, and he screamed. And that was just the beginning of eternity as he was to know it.
Chapter VI
Feeding on the Essence of Another God….
In a far corner of the throne room in the great palace of Hel-Valha, the Ka of Suetonius Paulinus was stretched out on the floor and was skinless. His flesh had been neatly peeled away from his body and was now spread out and fastened to the floor by hooks made of fire. He could still feel the pain of suffering that torture. He—his Ka—was held in place by vine-like tendrils with suction cups that sent a burning serum coursing throughout him. His sightless eyes stared, as though keeping them open might somehow grant him some sign of light. He opened his mouth and screamed repeatedly, but no one present could hear him.
In fact, no one anywhere could hear him aside from himself. The sound that escaped his throat was silent to those outside his own head but amplified infinitely inside him. The deafening roar of his screaming served only to heighten his pain and confusion, but the actual physical pain to his Ka was such that he could not cease, and he could not die.
His Sheut was nailed to the wall with daggers. His Sheut was himself, precisely similar to his body as it had been on earth, but it was a complete shadow of that body from head to toe. The hilt of each dagger was an elongated reptilian head that bit him over and over, and his body shook in convulsions, wracked with venomous pain. His head leaned forward, and from his mouth drooled spittle. The falling drool was the shadow of spittle as it hit the floor and vanished as though it had never existed. Suetonius’ Ka felt the venom coursing through his veins, felt himself dying the death that he could never partake of. His Sheut, in turn, felt the acid boiling through the veins of the shadow; heard the deafening screams amplified infinite times over. Each of the seven aspects of his being was isolated in separate viewing chambers by invisible barriers, and each felt the pain of the other, and all felt the torment collectively.
The Ka of Catus Decanius was in another far right corner of the throne room. Catus slowly slid down the spear he was impaled upon as it rose out of the floor in an endless upward motion. It was the Spear of Endless Ascent. Blood ran out of his mouth, and he moaned. His arms had been removed, and his legs were now in their place. His arms were where his legs had been, and he wore his internal organs on the outside of his body—intestines, heart, liver. His Ren, which was his true name, stared into the Mirror of Truth at his own jackal head and wept in shame. He couldn’t stop weeping at the revelation of what he truly was and always would be. He wanted to try to find a place to hide, perhaps to curl up, to become a child again, but he was frozen in front of the magick mirror, and always would be.
To all of this Thorn gave no heed as he lolled on his throne. The throne was carved of solid onyx, and the top corner posts were adorned by the ancient horned and fanged vampire skulls of his ancestors set into the onyx. On each skull sat the two ravens, Hugin and Munin. They took many forms and flew throughout all the worlds and dimensions, gathering whatever information Thorn required.
At the rune’s feet, gorgeous women of all shades writhed in an orgy of unending pleasure. There were goddesses and succubi of all types intertwined. Some looked like mortal women, some were snow white and had red eyes like Thorn, and some had wings and were covered in thin fur, as are bats. There were sirens with the bodies of mermaids and mouths of fangs, and there were those who were mortal in form but colored like various jewels. Transparent beasts, lions, apes, and man-sized lizards casually loped in and out of the throne room. They looked as if they were made of crystal.
Thorn slumped on his throne in the ecstasy of the greatest intoxication a god can experience. The smoking pipe that now lay on the arm of the onyx throne gave out the remaining mists of what was left over from the previous session of his feeding. Rubbery vine-like tubes ran from the pipe and were fastened with suction cups along the body of Andraste.
Andraste was securely fastened by multi-colored, jewel-like bands to a stake that rose from the floor. She writhed and burned in a fire that sent out waves of flames in all colors, some visible to the human eye, many outside the range of what humans recognize. The burning goddess was contained in an invisible, cylindrical barrier, penetrated by the suction-like, flexible tubes attached to Thorn’s pipe. Her screams, like those of Catus Decanius and Suetonius Paulinus, could be heard only inside her being, infinitely amplified as they were.
Thorn was taking her very essence into him, and this act had left him in a slumber, within the Great Dreams that only an Ancient can hope to dream. The rune was intoxicated by all seven layers of the goddess’ spirit, and he would revel in the visions and dreams that were the wondrous events actually taking place on another plane. When this euphoria was complete, he would awaken ten times stronger than he had been before taking up his pipe.
Even now, the light was diminishing in Andraste’s piercing, evil eyes as the fire consumed her. As she burned, she shifted and changed into the various incarnations she had assumed down through the ages, from the demonic appearance of the platinum-haired, terrible goddess of victory down to the dark-headed, full-bosomed peasant girl she had assumed to waylay hapless men and drag them down to their doom. Only a few more burnings remained before Thorn would consume her essence, before Andraste fell into oblivion and become as if she had never been.
Thorn smiled the smile of an Ancient in the throes of the Ecstasy of the Great Feast.
Epilogue
Bunduica’s prowess in the black arts had grown so rapidly and to such an astonishing degree that it had surprised even Thorn. Upon the witchmaker’s last visit to his prodigy at the cottage at the edge of the world, Thorn had concluded his stay with, “I don’t think you will be needing me for anything else.”
She had thanked the rune and wished him well on his next hunt.
Occasionally Bunduica would look in on old Balor. The old man swelled with equal parts pride and awe each time he heard the voice of the woman that he considered the daughter he had never had.
Aside from visiting the old druid, the witch’s trips into the world of men became less and less frequent as her strength in her art had grown. She much preferred the company of succubi, incubi, lamiae and the associations with assorted other-worldly creatures at the celebration of the sabbat.
With the overwhelming number of feats that she had rapidly been capable of performing, it had only recently dawned on Bunduica what results the practice of necromancy might yield.
* * *
Just a shadow of a woman was cast on the faintly candlelit wall of the cottage on Walpurgis
nacht. The shade spoke in a waning voice like one who is dreaming aloud. “You have done well by your tribe. You have avenged the Iceni, and you have avenged your kin. I will always love you.”
Tears rolled down Bunduica’s face as she sobbed. “I will always love you, Mother.”
Faint, and fading back into the world of shades, Boadicea trailed off. “I… know...”
…Leaving Bunduica alone in the empty room.
In the distance, she heard the ecstatic cries of the demons, devils, nymphs, and satyrs reveling in the sabbat, her new home.
Vengeance of the Insane God
By Jason Tarpey
INTRODUCTION
This was an age of silver light, an age of steel forged out of darkness. Before it, the things of chaos crawled and swam and devoured. After it, darkness and chaos would reign again. It was a time as brief and thin as a moonlit blade swung in the night.
Preceding this flash of sun and order, the Gods fought for sanctuary. The isle of Isahin is where the insane and malevolent Brakur, the Formless, was allowed to wallow and die. The new sun shattered his body into a thousand pieces. His flesh rotted and saturated the soil.
For aeons, the wind and surf had torn away at the petrous coast of Isahin. Never having been tread upon by man or burdened beast, she stood as an unspoiled black and green gem in a desolate, azure sea.
The first men to reach Isahin were the brazen warriors from Maelhin, a village built in the shadow of the great peak Shunned Albrunn. They were sorcerous smiths, burning their slain heroes upon forges, their swords melted down and mixed with the warrior’s ashen remains. This rite was the Pyre-Forge—ash into iron, life into steel.
The Maehlish were the keepers of the Summoner’s Pit and they mocked the gods by building their battlement below Albrunn. They mocked them further by faring the seas westward, and driven by tempest, crashing their ships into the jagged coast of Isahin where caverns honeycombed the eastern strand.
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