Harden scanned around himself and peered across the dark horizon of the lands of ash. He carefully watched the churning dark vortex surrounding his ethereal presence, trying to spot any other vibrant souls in the area, any other encroaching threats that may wish to kill him or take his partially prepared ritual for themselves.

He spotted a few flickering glimpses of the bright souls of other Unveiled. The flaring beacons were incredibly difficult to spot through the churning ash. So much so that until one of them brightly surged with magic, he doubted he had seen them at all.

He released his focus on the lands of ash, and his eyes opened back up in the Mortal coil. The bright light of the sun high in the sky wormed in through the slats and breaks of the barn and bathed the area in rays of vibrant gold.

“That's good,” He dryly muttered to the three dangling corpses. “no one is trying to scrap.”

He tightly clutched the mug of muddy water he had drawn up out of the nearby well. He swirled the brackish liquid and stared idly across the barn. He hesitantly brought the mug to his lips and sucked it down. The bitter metallic taste burned as it hugged his cracked throat.

“Ya’ll know, I can’t wait fer this tah be over,” He coughed. “could go fer a beer, or sum whiskey. what do ya’ll reckon?”

The bodies swayed lazily back and forth on the hooks, the rusted iron chains creaking. Harden traced their muscles; exposure's effects had already taken hold. Any wet luster the thews had the previous night was gone. Now the three sacrifices resembled drying jerky.

“That a right good idea,” Harden muttered as he set the mug on the table.

Harden got up to look over the fileted skin, tracing his fingers along the damp strips. Harden had processed the large slabs of flesh into filets half as wide as his fingers the previous night. While this would not make the process of him preparing the ritual much faster, it would likely cut down the wait by a day or two, provided it doesn't rain anymore.

As his eyes crawled the long thin strips of the skin, Harden spotted a shoddily scrawled tattoo that he had not seen during the heavy storm and dim light of the previous night. The sight of the United Union’s double “U” tattoo had Harden's blood boiling.

Those government slaves had been stepping on Mother's toes for quite a while and, by proxy, Harden’s. He was unsurprised that the Unveiled he filled with lead had been from the Union. The Union was no good at Hunting any of the beasts, haints, or monsters of the mountains. They did not have prime-selected candidates like Mother. Instead of selecting those exceptionally gifted, they filled their innumerable ranks with prisoners, vagabonds, desperate no one, and daring fools.

How the Government managed to create a rudimentary form of the spell Mother had used to transform him, he could not say. What he did know was it was nearly worthless. The Union members' souls might as well have been naked, utterly unprotected from the sapping effects of being around the entities.

Witchborn Unveiled, cultists, ancient fae, and entities alike had slaughtered countless members of the Union's ranks. Yet the government kept sending them out like lambs to the slaughter, ruefully unprepared for the horrors that lurked in the woods. Those were the ones who got lucky; they at least had the blessing of a relatively quick death.

The far more tragic ones were those who became Voids, hollow husks of humanity that shamble around the mountains, towns, and cities. They live in a permanent fugue state, going through actions from their previous life as if they were still wholly human, only to eventually go mad and attack the first thing they see, or worse, end up as a possessed skin suit worn by an entity.

Harden shuddered at the thought of those poor sods. He would not wish that twisted fate on his worst enemies. They would be better off as kyarn on the side of the road. So far, Harden was lucky and only had fought one of those horrific monsters. The memory of the twisted spider-like beast caused its corrupted soul to flare in his pneuma; The sight of that monster stitched together out of the still-screaming bodies of lost miners was a horror he would rather forget.

He doubted he could ever look at a mine again without going mad, much less attempt entry into one. The screams and wails of his fellow Witchborn were as vibrant in his mind now as they were on that fateful day. He could not imagine how many of his brothers and sisters had been torn to shreds that day. It was likely decades of Mother's hard work lost in a few hours.

Hardin shook his head clear of those memories after he noticed the goosebumps that had begun to sprout on his arms. Lingering on those thoughts was something he simply should not be doing at this point. He knew he still had much work left to do.

Their blood to bind, He thought.

This step was the one Harden dreaded the most for preparing the ritual. Gutting and draining someone was always messy; somehow, he would always be coated in rotten blood and guts by the end.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Harden dragged a trough underneath his three dangling sacrifices. He hoped the massive container would be enough to contain their guts and organs. This ceremony did not require the guts or blood to be perfectly fresh, so letting them maturate in the open air for the next week or so would be acceptable, even if the pleasant scent of hay and recent rain would get replaced with the pungent, sour haze of festering innards.

He plunged his knife deep into the first corpse's guts, wrenching it from sternum to groin. The razor-sharp blade easily slid through the thin tissue of the abdominal cavity. The delicious twang of the edge rang out as it slid free of the drying muscle. A vile, putrid odor poured out of the cadaver. The scent made Harden's nose hairs curl strongly enough that his pneuma mark recoiled away from the body.

The foul smell of shit and rotting carrion filled the room, accompanied by an ocean of chunky crimson that poured out of the slit. It squelched and slopped heavily against the trough's sides, and blood cascaded out and over the lips of the barrel, coating Harden's trousers.

Harden stepped back from the body, bemoaning the state of his clothing. He looked between his britches and the other two bodies and sighed, resigned himself to the curse he seemed to be under. The curse did not care if it was slaughtering a pig, calf, or man. He would always end up soaked in innards. No amount of Mothers or his magic seemed to change that.

As quickly as Harden gutted the first man, he prepared the other two. With deft, measured accuracy, the ordeal was over as swiftly as it began. Each sacrifice had gotten one last jab at Harden by pouring their festering guts into his boots.

“Blind them so they can see,” Hardin said as he stepped away from the draining corpses. Blood slowly dripped out of them, rippling across the surface of the near-overflowing trough.

He walked across the barn to his hanging backpack, and his feet squelched as the putrid blood shifted inside his boots, squishing against his soles. The feeling of wet boots was horrible enough most of the time, and knowing the origin of that damp feeling was just an added notch into his belt of things he did not like.

He drew from the pack a dusty glass mason jar. The clear moonshine inside of it sloshed as he untwisted the cap. The heavy acidic odor of the alcohol wafted out. It might as well be the breeze of a bright summer morning compared to his sacrifices.

While he returned to his now gutted friends, he picked up a rusted spoon from the table. He clambered onto a chair and readied himself to pull the eyes out of the dripping Unveiled. He wrapped his boney fingers around the first one's jaw and tilted the head back towards him. The corpse's yellow teeth were on full display, a grim permanent smile plastered on the skinned face of the man.

Hardin looked into the man's dull green eyes, and they stared back into him. He unfalteringly held the gaze of the man's corpse. The once pleading eyes of the cadaver twisted under Harden's stern observation. He playfully flipped the rusted spoon between his fingers, savoring the spite that poured out of the glassy emeralds, unafraid of the judgment the man's soul held for him.

With a steady hand, Harden plunged the spoon into the man’s eye socket, and a squirt of blood and clear fluid shot out around the rusted instrument. Harden began to dig the spoon around the edges of the eye. The mixed juices flowed down the muscles of the man's face, in a queer mimicry of the tears the man shed when Harden slayed him several days ago.

He carved deeper into the socket with every calculated twist and pull of the decayed instrument. The thin muscles holding the soul's window in place gave way under Harden's will. He dragged the blunt edge of the spoon along the skull behind the eye. The grisly snap of the linkage of the man's soul separating from his body sounded as pleasant as one’s mother calling them in for supper.

He scooped the eye from its rightful home, leaving a dark red void. Harden dropped the eyeball into the jar, the clear moonshine filled with wisps of blood. He did not need the eyeball for any reason, but Mother liked getting her talons around any spare parts her children collected.

As Harden meticulously collected the remaining eyes, he pondered his strange relationship with Mother. He remembered his first meeting with the crow witch and reflected on the deal he had struck.

He had been shivering like a leaf in the snow. A long trail of blood behind him led to where he had fallen victim to the ire of an angry bear. He had been limping for what felt like miles in knee-deep snow but likely was only a few yards.

He collapsed to his knees, the winter cold ready to take him. The biting cold sucked the heat from him like a ghastly vampire. He had desperately tried to stand, but his legs had frozen as stiff as the pine trees surrounding him.

As if she had flown to him upon the blistering winds, Mother had appeared out of nowhere and offered him salvation. She was a figure as black as coal, all of her details concealed behind her thick coverings. Endless flowing plumage of ravens; countless skulls, medallions, talismans, and other magical trinkets floated amidst the ocean of black. They fluttered and chimed against one another as the winds buffeted her.

Her siren-like call flowed from beneath the endless void of her veil. It promised renewed vigor and continued life so long as he was hers. Harden was desperate and was not even sure she was real. He assumed she might have just been a phantom conjured up by his dying mind, a representation of death that had come to reap his mortal soul.

Before Harden realized it, he had been seduced by that siren serenade. She took him beneath her cloak and held him tenderly against her life-giving body. At least, that's what he thought had happened, most of that day was a fog, but he vividly remembers the warmth and comfort she gave him when he felt he had met his end. Harden also remembered the tender touch of her long crystal claws caressing his cheek, as any mother would to her crying child.

Harden smiled as he set the jar of eyes down. The bloody souls floated aimlessly inside the now milky pink fluid. He had become rather fond of what Mother had given him. Even if his mortal soul was damned to likely one day become a succulent morsel for one of the beasts he now hunts, he was still content.

Harden strapped his holster to his shoulders and tenderly ran his thumb along the cold, knurled hammer of his Lemat. The pistol was his most faithful friend and a bitter reminder of the Confederate home he would never see again. He scooped up a dented empty bucket and walked out of the barn. The bright sunlight burned his eyes for a moment. He lowered his hat and started to meander towards the nearby creek to clean the vile muck off his clothes and collect a few suitable stones.