The Revenant was bound by the ankles with auritium shackles. Her unblinking, mana-burning eyes cast light through the dim Slaughterhouse like torches held by twin guards on watch. They illuminated Antinaz’s sandals. He smiled at her as he ran a hand up and down her side. The mana within was brighter than a minor demon. Old, withered, rancid—hardly delicious, like the pure energy that radiated from their partner at the Tower’s pinnacle. But it was mana all the same. It would do.
He kneeled down to her level. Her sewn-shut mouth was at the top of her head. Her chin, an arch to frame his most hideous trophy. But he would not be keeping this one. This one had to be taught a lesson.
“My father will hear about this,” said an elf in a pen some distance off. His voice was weak. “He won’t let you get away—he won’t leave me here—you’ll—you’ll all pay. I’m warning you now. I’m warning you—”
“Be quiet,” another elf hissed back in Regal. “Sleep, child. It will be over soon enough.”
A scream followed. A frightened echo through the dark chamber. Panic battering the metallic grates. Then—serene silence.
Antinaz’s smile broadened. “I wish I could say the same for you, Hesychia,” he said. Now his fingers ran across her throat. “I’d invite you to defend yourself, but…”
A nod toward her mouth. She made a sound, a mumbling grunt, and her features twitched in fury. But she said nothing. She could say nothing, so long as she was under the effect of auritium. She would be unable to use any magic at all—and thus she would be unable to use her voice. She should have considered that when she stitched her lips together.
He stared into her eyes. She stared back. The funny thing about turning herself into an abomination, and about seeking to emulate what it was that made one an elf, was that she had turned her eyes into instruments of the Aether. Her lids could no longer hold back her sight. She could not look away from him now.
Of course the torturers had other ways to ensure a victim’s eyes remained open. Antinaz preferred to avoid such inhumane measures while he could afford it. He was a compassionate soul. A lack of compassion was what had gotten Hesychia here, suspended upside down from a meathook, in the first place.
“You probably think you’re old.” She didn’t respond. “Two centuries, is it? Two centuries—and you’re already starting to leak.” He pressed his thumb into a point of her flesh where the skin was missing, where mana shined through from her Essence. “Let me make something clear to you now. I never liked you. You were an imposition from the Council. Another human to get in my way. I don’t have time for your prophecies any longer. I might have ventured to Katharos myself and detonated a spell that killed half the city; I want you to consider why I didn’t while you die.”
Her withered nostrils flared. It was so much less fun when she couldn’t talk back. He considered lecturing her further, for he had much more to say, but after shoveling through so many Councilors over so many centuries, he found he didn’t much care to draw the end out. She was beneath him. She should never have risen so high to begin with. Now she would vanish.
He started at her head. A hand presented, he siphoned her Essence into his own. Her eyes flared and were drawn toward him as if caught in a wind and blown his way. The fire beneath her skin billowed in his direction. She struggled, screaming silently against her closed lips.
It was cool magic. Unpleasant. Icy through his veins, like an infusion of embalming fluid. He stopped the transfer. Blinking. Shuddering. But then it hit him. The high. A high of tremendous heights, skyrocketing him, sending his mind buzzing and all his skin tingling, and he grinned as he felt the first hints of her power diffusing throughout his bloodstream.
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A bitter taste was a small price to pay.
He resumed.
Up her face. Her neck. Her wilted breasts. To her heart, where he sensed the fire of her Essence burning like a demon’s. That was the main course. He reached out and tapped it. Breathing it into his lungs. Taking hold of it with his mind, bringing it out from her and into himself, and he felt fountains of freezing water coursing throughout his body, shooting, chilling him everywhere, like burning cold against his skin, like sudden heat after a blizzard, but he let the energy pour into him still…
Until there was nothing left. When Antinaz opened his eyes, the Revenant was gone. A heap of ash was on the ground in her place, fallen from her shackles. And after a brief few moments of unpleasantness, the high hit him again.
His stomach filled to the brim. His hunger for mana utterly satisfied. His whole body tingling with pleasure. His mind hissing in happiness, releasing ecstasy.
Now Hesychia knew what it was like to be used as fuel for another’s Essence. A fitting fate for the failed Warlock.
He had been scheduled to consume two elves today, but he did not need to overindulge himself. He departed the Slaughterhouse fat and happy. He hardly even enjoyed the screams as he waited for the door to raise. There was too much bliss on his mind.
Nerimante intercepted him on the other side. She had been waiting for him to finish with the Revenant; now she trailed after him down the halls.
“Aion will not be happy to learn of this,” she said.
“Aion will be next if he doesn’t show me the respect I’m due,” he said.
“You agreed to Hesychia’s plan. You consented to the Mark of Death. Does this punishment not seem extreme?”
“My dear Nerimante.” He stopped to speak to her directly. “She sent a Kynigos after the girl who excised a vampire. Do you not think a Seer should have foreseen that fact?”
“None of us knew Eris was responsible for the defeat of Lord Arqa. You cannot blame her.”
“I already have,” Antinaz said. He continued back down the hall. “The matter is settled. Hesychia failed to control her demon. She failed to kill Eris. The Chamber is saying eight thousand citizens of the city were killed in the Kynigos’ rampage; if they learn our role, it will be a permanent scar on our reputation.”
“They will not learn our role,” Nerimante said.
“Is it your womanly intuition that tells you that? I hope it’s more finely tuned that Hesychia’s.”
“But she did not fail. Korax Korakos is dead, and our involvement is unknown. The Mark of Death was successful.”
“You might be happy your play-thing lives another day, but I would have just as soon seen her strung up. Do you know, when we met, Nerimante, she called me old?”
Nerimante did not laugh at his joke. No matter how merciful and maternal the old crone chose to present herself, she was an ancient demon, just like Antinaz; behind her white eyes and buxom breasts there lurked a shrewd sorceress that was not to be underestimated.
“Hesychia’s prophecy came true. She assured you Korax would be slain. So he was.”
“She assured me she could control her pet. I would sooner have Korax alive than half Katharos in rubble.”
“Do not pretend you care about ten thousand human lives, Grandmaster.”
“Of course not.” He glanced at her suspiciously, as if there were some alternative motive in asking such a silly question. “But I have an instinctive dislike of collateral damage. I also dislike failure. But enough of this; the matter is settled.”
They arrived together in an elevator. A Servitor operated it to the top of the Tower at Antinaz’s command. Now they were alone, he reached out to molest Nerimante. She neither reciprocated nor protested at his advances—just like normal.
“The real question,” he whispered into her hair, “is what your plans are for the girl.”
“My plans are secondary to yours, Grandmaster.”
“You’re right about one thing. I gave Hesychia my consent to her plan. Now it’s time we try a different tactic. So I have no plans, Nerimante. You decide the fate of Eris.”
The elevator came to a stop. She put a hand on Antinaz’s chest and pushed him away. “Then I council you as I always do. Wait and see what the future brings. Who knows what tomorrow may reveal; we may even find a replacement for our vacant human seat on the Gray Council.”
He laughed. “Your sentimentality is heartwarming. But so be it. I grow tired of discussing one rogue human bitch. There are far more pressing matters that demand our attention.”
She nodded, following him out of the elevator. “Indeed. While you were indulging yourself, I heard news of the Hypaspist. Our scouts have spotted him in Ganarajya.”
Antinaz sighed. “Ganarajya. Tell me more.”