Beast of the Damned #2

*Chapter Twenty-Nine*

~ TRISTAN~

Flickering orange hues cast along the cracks of the stone walls. Shadows creep and crawl, refusing to let the light of the torches overtake them. The splotches of dark bend into shapes, demons of different variety and species litter the walls playing in the prison of the shadows. Demons cannot exist on the earth unless our Maker sends them or they are called upon. The ones on the walls are voyeurs, here but not here.

"Are you sure this is the path you want to take?" My mother twists over her shoulder, the flames from the torches glinting off her diamond-encrusted crown. Her frail hands stay wrapped around the serpent handles attached to thick double doors made of black diamond steel. The demons in the shadows slink their way to the doors, taking turns circling my mother's hands and slipping between the cracks to the other side.

"What other choice have you given me?"

The emerald lake of fire in the sky exists. Kinley's soul has a place in an afterlife of unknown origin. Kinley's other fate where the Phoenix nest at the world's end. It's tied to this realm she's been to.

"You must prepare yourself. A god does not take kindly to her will being questioned." My mother warns, pushing open the doors I last went through when I was twenty-three.

"I don't seek to question her will. I'm here to negotiate. The cunt loves to make deals, so I'm going to see if she'll make one."

The Spring of Evil, the Devil's Milk, the Black Water of the Underworld rests in a raised stone altar in the center of the heptogram carved into the stone floor. The tar-like water is forged from the blood of the Cirʞlǝ ʌ'f ˥ħ ξcuŁoς—the Circle of the Eye. An ancient brukah coven of spell casting demons slaughtered by my father's hand shortly after the birth of The Council. Their crimes were attempting to harness white magic. The Circle of the Eye didn't take kindly to our Maker setting the Prince of Darkness on the throne.

The Circle of the Eye is why my mother is warning me. The last subjects to question Satan ended up becoming magical bathwater. The Spring of Evil is a hell mouth. It is a portal to the Underworld and how the weapons infused with our life force are gifted to the warrior bloodline. They come to us through the water upon receiving our blood. Luckily, the Warriors of the Dammed came combat ready when I raised them.

Roarra said our Maker is growing weaker by fracturing her life force into the Massarra. If I can offer her a sacrifice large enough for her to regain the powers she had to give up until she ascends, she may choose one of the other massarra. I can live with Kinley belonging to her coven. I can't live knowing the human I love's soul has been obliterated. If that doesn't work, how does one go about attempting to raise the Underworld when I am not its maker?

The short answer. It's impossible.

If our Maker won't reconsider, I'll have to figure out how to make Kinley's other fate come true. Eternal rest is better than oblivion.

The channels that make up the seven-pointed star are slitted v's carved into the ground. And though I've never bared witness, this room is where all the massarra were immortalized, including Kinley. The channels dug into the ground are made to let the blood flow, filling the heptagram and the circle that contains it.

This must be where our Maker rises. The massarra positioned at each point of the heptagram and Kinley...

That's why I'm here, to ensure Kinley is at one of those points and not the sacrifice on the altar.

"If Kinley is not sacrificed, eternal war will break out that neither side can win. I've seen it." My mother halts me from slicing open the regalback sani snake I brought along as my sacrifice. "Her soul burns with emerald fire. If her fire is not contained, the emerald lake in the sky will burn us all."