Like any other traitor-heretic, Everie received no trial.
It didn’t matter that she had served the cult faithfully for almost two decades. Today was the day she would be silenced - and by the will of Zabaniya, it would be done.
Hah. Everie would have laughed, had she not been gagged.
Everie felt the stifling warmth of the straightjacket press against her chest. The dim light of the hallway’s fluorescent lights barely illuminated the silhouettes of her two captors, who dragged her by the scruff of her jacket across the floor.
Dark, hooded figures hustled past her, their murmurings poking holes in the otherwise silent room. The chanting only picked up speed as her captors intensified their strut, walking faster towards the gilded doors at the end of the corridor.
Those doors, Everie knew, lead to the place she would die. The manner of which was what she was curious about.
Would they flay her? Set her on fire? Crucify her? As much as the cult of Zabaniya scorned the faith of the Brass Cities, they were as much a creed as any other. They were mere contrarians - charlatans, using a long-dead philosophy to foster a continuing cycle of hate and death.
We live in a ruined world, Everie recalled. Gods may have once walked this land. But no longer.
Her name was still whispered of darkly in the underworld - even the vilest of wayward scum feared her prowess. A tool of a terrorist organization that waged war relentlessly against every one of the religious states that this ruined world worshiped.
Everie had killed pulpits. Prophets. Even the worshipers, flitting vapidly through the cities of the so-called just.
They were just as complicit, Everie had tried to convince herself. It was an ideology that had been baked into her soul from the very beginning by the cult, and she had eventually convinced herself that it was true.
The Cities of Brass had their templar-order and soldiers. The cult had the Sisters. Representatives of Demon-King Zabaniya’s Seven Virgin Sisters, from a legend writ in ancient times.
Once upon a time, Everie had been the greatest of them all.
No.
Now, the very same order had been what finally brought her to heel.
She had fled two months prior, after releasing half a dozen sacrifices from the cult catacombs. Everie had gotten them to safety as best as she could, using a trail built for other escapees that had been constructed by another long ago. But after the escape, even the First Sister could only evade both the long arm of the so-called just and grasping hand of the cult for so long. It was a small world that they lived in; there were only cities, and the cult betwixt.
The Sisterhood catching up with her had been an inevitability anyway. Everie might have been their most senior member, but they had been taught not only by the cult, but by her, in the exact same ways. So Everie had resigned herself to death.
And now, it seemed the end to her checkered story was going to play out in the very place it had once begun.
The doors finally swung open, exposing Everie to a room that she had seen many a time before: the cathedral. Everie observed passively, her black eyes - glinting like onyxes from the candlelight - flickering across the room. Nothing much about it had changed. The embossed blackstone still seemed to warp and leer under the flickering candlelight. The scent of dirt and rust permeated the building, which Everie knew was from the burnished brass pressing against the complex from above.
The same four priests stood behind the altar, pale faces covered by shawls. The same array of armed soldiery stood straight in rows, automatic rifles strapped to their backs. The-
Everie swallowed, closing her eyes. Her- the Sisterhood watched her from the rafters. They hid themselves well, as was expected of them, but Everie knew their tricks - how they knew to stay out of the light, how they stayed so still, so silent. How they were so disciplined and robotic, having neither expression nor disposition.
I’m sorry I couldn’t save you all, she thought.
I’m sorry I was so weak.
“The traitor-heretic arrives,” whispered the first priest.
“She betrayed her trust, and her kin,” snarled the second priest.
“Her sentence must be commensurately painful,” agreed the third priest.
“Scorning not only the so-called gods, but the great Demon- King himself,” mocked the fourth priest. “Does your willful act of independence make you proud?”
“It did not do the one you called Sister any good, that’s for certain.”
Everie stilled. She closed her eyes, before exhaling. “Fuck you all,” she spat.
Men like the priests killed and warred and waged battle for the sake of something that Everie could see so plainly was nothing but exploitation. In this world of vice, they were the greatest fools of them all; people who were convinced there was a greater force guiding them.
Everie hated men like these above any else.
The first priest twitched. Everie found some satisfaction in watching how his lips curled in displeasure, however momentarily.
“Bring the traitor to the altar,” he whispered. “She will join the great Zabaniya in his righteous quest in another form, regardless of her waywardness.”
Everie almost snorted.
The altar was cold. Everie had touched it before the first time she had entered the cathedral, but back then the stone had felt only moderately chill. It had certainly not been freezing - edges colored with frost - as it was now.
Some of the soldiery seemed to share her confusion, at least. The priests, either from having overlooked it or some other reason, didn’t seem to care.
What a pain in the ass, Everie thought to herself, grimacing. Can’t they get on with it?
As if to answer her, the first priest stabbed her in the hand with his barbed ceremonial knife.
To her credit, Everie didn’t scream. Sure, her flesh had basically been rent from the bones of her hand, but the most she did was wince.
Her other hand, then both her feet soon followed. This time, Everie allowed herself a small tch.
And that’s all they’ll get from me, Everie thought, gritting her teeth. There’s nothing more this world can do to make me scream.
The soldiery seemed to murmur, as if impressed by her force of will. Torture and execution was nothing new for them, but Everie thought they might at least be reluctantly respectful of her stony composure.
Everie didn’t care about them. They could compost in a heap altogether with the cult-priests and the prophets, for all that she bothered.
But the cold gazes of those above her made her ache in a different way. The Sisterhood watched her, silent. Everie sighed, turning her head to face the wall of the cathedral, away from them.
Was it because of the blood-loss? Everie thought she could see them a little clearer, now, despite the light having actually dimmed from one of the priests going around and extinguishing all the candlesticks behind the altar. It was enough for her to see their robes - the black-silk cloaks and tactical vestments Everie felt her body conform to fit in even now, as her body shed rivulets of blood down the side of her execution-block.
They had no names, but Everie remembered every one of them. The farthest from center had been numbered twelve by their operations. She was a small girl, of only fourteen, her face draped with a mane of twine-like blond hair that grew matted and messy no matter how many times she tried to clean and press it…
Then there were six and five. They were actual sisters - even by the looks of it, with matching black hair and hazel eyes. They had been triplets, until seven had perished in a gunfight years before.
And number two. Everie’s replacement - and a rising star, just like she herself had once been. The girl had an acumen from tracking - once marked, her targets never failed to fall.
But the only memory that stuck out to Everie that contained her was the face of the eleven-year old girl after she fed her some sort of cornbread wrap she’d swiped from one of the city markets.
And then, there were the fallen. Her dead comrades - her deceased Sisters. They called out to her in the hundreds, from beyond the veil. They call for my blood.
Two faces in particular stuck out to her among that mass. But she pushed that thought down as deep as she possibly could into the recesses of her memory. No. Not now.
Everie was number-one. She was the oldest among their ranks, and by far the most experienced. Probably in the history of this regional pustule of the Zabaniya cult, at least-
No, Everie thought, shaking her head. You know that’s not true. There was still... the one that had given Everie her name. But Everie had already forgotten her.
That was what she told herself every night, at least. And it was what she would tell herself this very last time.
Blood spilt from the altar in rivulets, only to freeze mid-drip. Everie frowned. The chill had reached past her spine, now - she could hardly feel anything at all.
Had the priests planned this? She wondered. It wasn’t as if she could see the altar anymore - she couldn’t move a muscle, having been paralyzed sometime earlier - but she could still feel the frost covering the altar. It felt more like a block of ice than a slab of stone.
The priests were chanting something, but even Everie, too light- headed to really listen, felt their voice waver in uncertainty. There was something at play here that the cult of Zabaniya hadn’t planned for.
But the ritual continued. It couldn’t stop, now that it had already started.
“Praise be the great Demon-King!”
Her eyes rolled in her head.
“He, who shall bring scourge to the gods”
The gods, Everie thought, deliriously. The Demon-King's eternal foe. Scourge-to-scourge.
“Zabaniya, forgive this failed Sister and take her into your embrace-”
Everie spasmed. Her veins felt like ice, now.
She coughed as the first priest withdrew a longsword - a black Zweihander - from somewhere within his robes. He leaned over to her ear, breathing heavily, before whispering,
“Be thankful.
She spat blood in his face. To her frustration, the priest just laughed.
“Is there something you wish to say, then, before the King takes you into his embrace? Or can you even speak in that pathetic state of yours, oh-one?”
Everie grit her teeth. She couldn’t move, but she could damn well talk.
“Don’t call me that,” she croaked. “My name is Everie. Not that... label you’ve given to us. Don’t you fucking dare forget that.”
The priest chuckled, lips parting enough for Everie to see his teeth - stained brown, just like whatever remnant soul he had. “Ah, yes. That... name. The one that the previous oh-one gave you - or, what did you call her?”
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Everie’s eyes shot open. She threw herself at the priest, not really expecting anything - but to her surprise, her body shot up. There was no control in the leap; her body shattered the frost that had encased the small of her back in a wild rush to kill the man that had killed her sister.
The priest yelled out a strangled cry, stumbling backwards. Everie’s nails raked across his face, leaving a bloody gash that ran down his eye.
Something in Everie’s abdomen uncoiled in satisfaction. The ice encasing her skin shivered at her touch.
It took precisely another two seconds for her to collapse back onto the altar, the knives embedded in her feet and hands sending a jolt of pain so severe it almost made her scream.
Almost.
The priest stood up, leaning on the Zweihander that he’d been holding.
That pathetic thing they call the Archetype of the Sword. As if it’s anything so grandiose.
Everie growled. She glared at the Priests, who huddled together, whispering something to one another. The soldiers roiled - half of them looked ready to rush to the Priest and the altar to kill Everie themselves - but no order had been given, so they remained still.
The Sisters... were silent. Everie gave them a weak grin.
Remember this, she thought to herself, allowing herself her first true smile in years.
You’re family. You might not know what is. I don’t, either. Not really. That was why I abandoned it. That was what led me to kill so many of us.
But I hear it’s such a wonderful thing. Treasure-
“-it,” Everie whispered. “That would be enough.”
The priest she had scratched finally staggered over to her, covering his face with the sleeves of his cloak. He looked angry - and unsettled.
Right. His perfect ritual was over. The Demon-King he worshiped - though Everie doubted he was listening - would be angry at him. These deluded clowns were, after all, above all else focused on spectacle. He had to save face.
“That was foolish,” the Priest growled. “What do you think that accomplished? A dying, miserable girl like you cannot change anything. There are no heroes in this world, oh-one.”
He spread his arms, gazing upwards at the Sisterhood. “See! Nothing-”
He faltered. Everie followed his gaze upwards. Her eyes widened.
The Sisters - her Sisters - had walked forward, out of the shadows and onto the banisters to which the dim candlelight yet reached.
One by one, they crossed their right arms over their chests. Over their cloaks.
Over their hearts.
Everie blinked. Something wet had begun to bud on the corners of her eyes, and she didn’t think it was blood.
Ah, she thought. Repentance.
There would be consequences for this. The Zabaniya cult, like any other one of the religions, did not tolerate disobedience from its acolytes. Everie should be worried. But for now...
Thank you, she thought. Everie smiled beatifically. Her message had gotten through to them, after all.
The first priest growled in frustration, snapping Everie out of her thoughts.
“Whatever,” the man seemed to growl. “It means nothing.”
Then he stabbed the sword down through her sternum, and... into the stone below.
Two things happened then.
Almost immediately, a hyperborean freeze erupted out from the spot the Zweihander had pierced the stone. A wave of cryonic energy swept over Everie, crystallizing her blood into crimson snowflakes that whirled around the room in a veritable hurricane.
Everie’s eyes widened. She didn’t know what was going on, and neither did the priests, by the looks of it.
Then, she felt the presence of something watching her.
The priests screamed in reverence, and the soldiery fell to their knees. Everie trembled, that thing in her insides coiling in frustration. And fear.
“No,” she thought, in desperation. “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not- ”
THE GREAT EYE stared at her. And it defied everything she’d told herself, all those nights, from so long ago.
“The King’s messenger arrives!” the Priest cackled, even though this was clearly a development even he hadn’t been expecting. “And he-”
A bolt of black lightning burst out of the eye, striking the spot where the priests had congregated. The boom shook the rafters, almost knocking the Sisterhood above off their feet.
When the dust faded, there was nothing left.
Everie ignored them. Their deaths meant nothing to her.
The... thing looking at her - reaching for her, coveting her - held far more importance in her mind.
What... what is this?
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t hear. She could hardly even breathe.
No.
No!
The cold surrounding her intensified, and her abdomen roiled.
Black tentacles coiled around the eyeball, reaching for Everie - only for them to be sliced off as something tore through the air, coiling around and ripping through the demon.
Her eyes widened in horror.
It screeched, plummeting to the ground. The soldiery screamed, scattering. The Sisterhood clutched at the scaffolding, which swung in response to the tremors.
What- Everie thought, before her eyes widened and she screamed.
Everything - the sword, the knives in her feet, her ragged clothes - vaporized, exploding into a bolt of crackling lightning that struck the ceiling hundreds of feet above. The bolt seemed to warp the air as it passed, splitting the fabric of reality as it streaked through the air.
The resulting fulmination almost blinded her - and only then did Everie scream again, as she felt something tearing at her from all directions, twisting her through what she could only imagine as two walls that were pressed way too close together for her to travel through. In mere seconds, the cathedral seemed so, so far behind her; only the remnant reverberation of shattered pillars and collapsing stonework remained to remind her of the place that she had served ‘till death.
Everie blacked out.
----------------------------------------
When Everie opened her eyes, it was to another cyclopean entity; only this time, the beast-thing’s great eye was over five times her size, connected to a body instead of drifting in the air, and pressed almost a meter away from her face.
Oh. And the iris was the darkest black, only highlighted with a starburst of sporadic violet flecks.
She screamed.
Everie had maintained her calm before because she knew death. She dealt with it, after all. She knew what to expect from it. A mere execution - even her own? That wouldn’t faze her. But a literal demon, that from just her peripheral vision looked like it could use a skyscraper as a baseball bat?
Everie had subsisted her desire to stay alive and her defiance of the cult by denying the very possibility that their hocus-pocus was true. Because if it was...
If demons - and gods, by extension - were real, and still walked the realms... Then what was she to do?
A flicker of hatred manifested in her heart. She wanted to move, to do anything, but she couldn’t. She just felt so, so powerless - and she hated it. Hated that there was nothing she could do at all.
She felt weak.
The demon stared at her. Everie glared back with as much rancor as she could muster, but she couldn’t help but swallow the mouthful of bile that had built up in her throat. The prospect of being mauled by a titanic monster was probably less painful than the sacrifice she had just endured, but this somehow felt scarier.
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Everie choked. The thing was whimpering something, but the very act of it speaking seemed to warp and twist reality. She writhed on the ground, closing her eyes and trying to drown out the sound, to no avail.
Her respite came only when the beast withdrew its eye from her face, allowing Everie to get a better look at the monster that was her captor. It was big, just like she had presumed. It was a mountain of sinew and scale and flesh and muscle, all tightly corded into a vaguely bipedal shape.
She paused, faltering in her surveillance. Were those chains sticking out of it?
They were, indeed, chains - upon further scrutinization, Everie realized there were hundreds of massive chains, each cord the thickness of her waist, sticking out of the beast from its back. They were so far away that Everie hadn’t been able to see them from her vantage point before - at least, until the beast had drawn back.
Each of the chains were attached to something that looked like... a tear in the air. A rift, it seemed. Everie’s eyes widened. They looked just like what had killed the eyeball-demon from earlier.
And that wasn’t it. There were wounds all over it. And weapons - of make and the likes of which Everie had never seen before.
This thing had been hurt.
The question wasn’t what, though, but who.
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The beast shuddered. Blood exploded from Everie’s mouth in a thick geyser. She tried to twist out from whatever was keeping her from moving, before realizing, with irritation, that her hands and feet still retained the injuries of having been stabbed out by barbed knives.
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“S-stop,” Everie gasped. “It hurts.”
The beast reared back, and Everie, stunned, let out a startled wheeze.
She noticed then, incredulously, that the beast had listened to her. Or it had stopped talking, at the very least.
Its single eye dilated. It studied her, looking first directly at her face, then traced down her bloodied form to her abdomen, where Everie felt that same thing coil.
She felt fear roil in her heart. That was only natural. But there was also something else- something…
Was it sorrow? Everie frowned. Everything was so strange. In the span of fifteen minutes, her entire world had turned upside down.
Then to her equal stupefaction, great, voluminous tears began to roll out of the crevices surrounding the singular eye of the beast. Shuddering sobs wracked the titanic monster.
A massive crybaby Demon should hardly surprise me now; Everie shook her head - internally, of course. Her spine had probably been snapped by the Zweihander going through her sternum earlier, now that she thought about it. She honestly didn’t know how she was still conscious; it was probably less from her sheer force of will, as strong as it may be, than the paranormality of this place.
The environment of hell was really just that - hell. There were the classic great gouts of lava shooting up in tall columns in lava lakes all over; giant, black-and-red spears of rock shot from the barren surface to pierce the stony ceiling above. There was no rhyme or reason to the rock formations - the striations were random, with pockets of ore of all sorts and veins and geodes pockmarking the walls randomly. Then there was that giant river of silvery, sparkly stuff that stretched from the horizon all the way to just to the left of the Crying Demon.
The hell is that? Everie thought, half-deliriously.
This time, what the Crying Demon said only made Everie wince, rather than convalescing on the floor. The fact that she had been able to understand what had been said only occurred to her a few seconds after.
The words- name emblazoned themselves in her mind.
Clear. Unmistakeable.
Soul Confluence.
Everie startled. She opened her mouth, trying to say something - only for her to cough up another geyser of blood and phlegm.
Through her wavering, tinted vision, she saw the looming form of the Crying Demon shadow her. It seemed to be staring at her; studying her, almost. For what purpose she didn’t know, although she doubted it was anything good.
She found her thoughts drifting off to the demon-thing that had the cult in its thrall. If that was Zabaniya, the King hadn’t inspired very many feelings of greatness in Everie, though. She almost couldn’t help but scoff: this was the monster that the cult worshiped? They were just as idiotic as the civilized theocracy, then, and their worship of the Pantheon.
The fetal, weeping form of the great beast somehow seemed much more impressive. Everie didn’t know why. She just... felt it.
Not to mention the fact that this was the demon that had slain the eyeball-demon with a rift and pulled Everie into this realm.
The feeling of the demon moving stopped her thoughts in their tracks.
Gently, almost delicately, the Crying Demon cradled Everie in between two of its massive fingers. Her bones jostled uncomfortably, but otherwise she could hardly feel a thing. Her consciousness wavered, but stayed long enough for her to witness the beast bring her up to face-level.
That is, hundreds of meters high in the air, level with the beast’s single, cyclopoid eye, from which fat tears still welled and splashed down on the rugged plains below in massive showers.
A single sliver of the fluid fell onto her. It coated her entire form, and Everie almost choked at the scent of it - before the silvery liquid percolated through her clothes and into her skin. It felt almost like the aftercurrent of an intravenous injection; like energy, it roiled through her, rushing through her limbs and into her... abdomen?
Everie gasped. She felt something coalesce around... that thing she had felt earlier. It felt distinctly uncomfortable.
What is this? She thought, blinking. It feels… strange. Constricting.
The Crying Demon rumbled something that Everie couldn’t properly construe. It struck her, however, that the beast sounded worried - penitent, even. Like it was apologizing to her for something.
The Beast opened its maw. It almost looked like it was trying to say something, but no sound came out of its massive gullet. More likely it was going to consume her.
Ah. Finally.
Everie closed her eyes.
Despite her best efforts, Everie couldn’t say that she had no regrets. But she was a tired, weary soul- she twitched, then sighed.
Well, whatever. You can’t get everything you want, after all.
And at least this is quite the way to die.
Everie felt her body shift, then contort. It was the sensation of movement, which - judging from this demon-thing’s ability to create those rifts from earlier - meant her end had finally come.
One second passed. Then, another. An odd sound, like a powerful gust or zephyr, whistled past her ears.
What’s going on? Everie thought, bemused. Why isn’t it eating me?
She opened her eyes to be greeted by a sea of silver hurtling towards her.
----------------------------------------
Everie was on fire.
That wasn’t a metaphor, or a figurative turn-of-speech, or some psychological analogy. No, she was literally on fire. Liquid magma burned her veins, twisting her muscles inside-out, sinew vaporizing like lard.
Regular fire had an end, though. Flames fed on fuel; but no matter how deep her agony blazed, there was always something more for it to consume. Everie opened her mouth in a silent scream - only for her to emit no sound.
It took moments ‘till there was nothing left of her body anymore, which also meant there were no nerves for the magma to consume. But the flames refused to stop; now something even more visceral and intrinsic to her felt like it was being burned away; yet at the same time, she felt stronger. Tempered.
Like an ingot in a forge aglow.
Briefly, she panicked, as she felt the flames ebbing closer to consume her memory as well - until what was left of that tear that had fallen onto her resonated, rebuffing the silvery fluid from absorbing her mind. As if chastised, the molten flames recoiled.
Everie burst through the surface. She was in agony, but it was a strange kind of agony. She blinked, staring blithely at the thing that had done this to her. It looked mournful. Wistful, almost - Everie had no idea where she was getting all this Insight from, but that was what it looked like. She couldn’t help but observe it. It could very well be the last thing she would ever look upon, after all.
At least, that was what she managed to construe before the flames of what the demon had called the Soul Confluence finally finished chewing away at her eyes. The last thing Everie saw of the demon was its single, cyclopean eye staring down at her, and the silver tears that fell from it yet.