The Girl with No Name Ch. 11

When she arrived near the Priest's house, Danka was greeted by four followers dressed in tightly fitting black clothing with their faces and hands painted black. They took her trader's outfit and handed her the wings and bird feet shoes. Danka's naked body trembled in the chilly autumn air, but she forced herself to stay silent. She pulled off her headscarf, trying to ignore the fact that three men and a woman were seeing her with her hair undone. It was a gross indecency, but one that was necessary for Fítoreckt's plan.

The three men snuck in first, lugging heavy sacks full of human heads. A few minutes later they re-emerged, their sacks now empty. Danka went in next, following the woman. One of the men followed her, holding her wings to prevent them from brushing against any objects in the house and making noise. Danka and the man waited silently while the woman carefully uncovered the Priest and pulled up his nightshirt. She gently and patiently masturbated him, managing to make him hard without waking him up. He was still asleep when he climaxed and the smell of semen filled the room. Danka marveled at what her companion had managed to accomplish.

The orgasm was Danka's signal to sneak up to the bed and straddle the Priest. The woman quickly lit two green oil lamps, giving Danka a completely surreal appearance. "Lilith" placed her hand close to the Priest's chest and grabbed his wet penis. He woke up with a start and a terrified grunt. The "demon" placed her hand on his chest and pushed him down, while her two companions reached up from under the bed and immobilized his arms. The Priest started to scream, but Danka put her hand over his mouth.

"You must be silent, my love. Do not be afraid. I am here for you. I am your beloved, and the owner of your soul. So do not fear..."

Danka uncovered the Priest's mouth and brought her face close to his. He was so terrified that he lost control of his bladder. Danka felt the hot piss flowing against her thigh. She was totally disgusted, but relieved that Fítoreckt's ruse seemed to be working so well. She continued.

"You have served me very well, my love. You have done everything I could have wanted. I have had many men, but you truly are the good servant. You have killed and betrayed for Satan without remorse...you have brought the darkness into your city. We could not have asked for more."

Danka caressed the Priest's hair and kissed his terrified face. With a wild look in her eyes, she stared at him in silence. He was violently shaking from mortal fear.

"And, best of all, every night, just for me...you were my loyal lover. You truly are special. I appreciate that you loved me and none other. I am grateful...so the moment has come for me to show my face."

Danka stood up, allowing the green lamps to illuminate her entire body. Her wings swayed back and forth.

"I now leave you, my love. But remember who you belong to. Remember, your soul is now sheltered in my womanhood, and there it will remain...forever. The next time I see you, we will travel to the underworld...together...and in the eternal darkness I will love you...FOREVER!!!"

Danka jumped off the bed. The window flew open. She hopped onto the windowsill, spread her arms, and fell forward. Outside, two black-clad Followers were waiting to catch her. The men pulled off her wings and the trio vanished into a narrow alleyway. In a well-rehearsed movement, they dressed Danka in a two-piece set of clothing normally worn by lower-class boys and quickly tied her hair. She hid her head under a peasant's hat and the three set out running along the back allies of the town. Danka could hear maniacal screaming coming from the direction of the Priest's house.

As soon as "Lilith" flew out the window, Danka's two bedroom companions extinguished the oil lamps, grabbed them, and silently scurried down the stairs and out the Priest's front door. They ducked into a neighboring house, changed clothes, and ran out the back door. They met up with Danka and her escorts near the city armory. Fítoreckt was waiting to lead the group to safety.

A city guard opened a supply door as the Followers approached. They jumped into the armory's basement and followed a hidden passageway that lead out of the town. A drainage gate, normally bolted shut, was open to allow their final escape. A city worker pulled aside the grate.

"Everyone's here?"

"Correct. No one else is coming."

"Praise be to the Ancients. May the Old World protect you in your journey."

"Thank you. May the Ancients bestow their gratitude upon you. We won't forget what you've done for us."

The worker knelt, took Fítoreckt's hand, and placed his forehead against the leader's fingers. The alchemist gave the worker a quick blessing and the group ran through a wheat field. As they fled, the town's church bells started ringing and they could hear shouting. Meanwhile, the worker bolted the grid back in place and tossed some branches to cover it.

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The town of Nagorónkti-Serífkti woke up to the crazed screams and curses of their Senior Priest. It was obvious to everyone that his soul was possessed by Beelzebub the Destroyer. He was shouting incoherently about the Roman Satan and having sex with a female demon. The guards tried to calm him down, but when he saw several young women in the crowd, he screamed:

"Women! Satan sent the young women to destroy the world! Kill them! Kill the evil harlots! Kill all the women! Must destroy them all! Burn the witches!"

The Priest threw himself at his dumbfounded female spectators, but the guards firmly held him and immobilized his hands. He viciously struggled, foam forming in his mouth. The townsfolk didn't know what to make of the bizarre spectacle, but they certainly weren't about to kill all of the city's women. Finally the chief councilman decided to enter the Priest's house. A moment later he came back out, with an ashen face and his eyes wide with horror. Inside the house was an altar to Beelzebub the Destroyer and two barrels full of human heads. They were from the town citizens the Priest had convinced to go into the mountains and destroy the Pagan sites.

It wasn't hard to figure out what happened. The Priest must have been in the service of Beelzebub the Destroyer all along, and he lured the town's best Christian men into the mountains so his could murder them and use their heads for satanic rituals. When Beelzebub the Destroyer took possession of his soul, the Priest went mad. Not hard to figure out.

The councilman decided to confirm the Priest's service to Beelzebub the Destroyer, by having him interrogated by relatives of men who had participated in the altar expedition. Sure enough, with the right amount of "encouragement", he confessed. The townsfolk were so infuriated they burned him at the stake, the first time anyone in the Duchy had been executed in such a manner since 1499. After failing to control the enraged mob and the town's leaders, the other Clergy members working at the Church in Nagorónkti-Serífkti fled in terror. For two months there were no Clergymen at all in Nagorónkti-Serífkti.

When the Grand Duke was informed about the situation in Nagorónkti-Serífkti, he asked the Senior Prophet of the Great Temple in Danúbikt Móskt to send people to replace the disgraced Priests from the True Believers' church. The new Clergy members were Priests and Priestesses from the Old Believers' faction. That was fine with everyone in the town. After what they had been through, no one in Nagorónkti-Serífkti wanted anything to do with the True Believers or their patrons from the Church in Rome.

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Alchemist Fítoreckt wanted to believe that the Followers' revenge against the men who had killed Babáckt Yaga was a sign that the Cult of the Ancients could return and reassert itself as part of the Duchy's society. However, the answer he received was firmly "no". The Old World was gone and it was not coming back...ever. The Ancients had granted the Followers their final wish, to avenge the death of Babáckt Yaga and the settlement elders. Following that moment of revenge, there would be nothing else. The Ancients were determined to no longer speak through the Cult. Alchemist Fítoreckt knew why; he had even explained the facts to Jadranka, when she was still known to the world as the Follower Danka. Time moved forward, never backward. So...it was up to Alchemist Fítoreckt, the last leader of the Cult of the Ancients, to close it down permanently.

The Altar of Blood Nourishment was indeed destroyed, but by the Followers themselves, not their enemies the True Believers. The Cult members took apart the structure stone by stone and took all of the pieces underground. They were careful not to damage any of the stones or bricks and numbered them so the site could be rebuilt, should the Realm of the Living ever want the Followers to return to the practices of the Old World. However, as the Cult members sadly took down their holy site, they knew they were dismantling the last vestiges of the Old World itself. The Altar and the beliefs it represented would be reduced to nothing more than a stack of stones and building materials buried underground.

The Followers handed over their skull staffs and Cult clothing. The personal items would be stored underground along with the stones from the Altar; in the unlikely event they could ever be reused. The Followers, standing outside in the bitter cold wearing ordinary winter clothing, sadly watched as Alchemist Fítoreckt rigged the explosion that would cause the entrance of the passageway to collapse. The chambers would remain intact, at least for a while, but the entrance would be destroyed, buried, and planted over. Once vegetation grew over the site, no fortune hunter would ever find it.

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Danka, now having returned to her new life as Student Jadranka, immersed herself in her studies throughout the rest of the autumn and the entire winter. She impressed all of the university's professors with her ability to remember detailed information and to grasp new concepts. She also impressed the university with her willingness to help others. She mentored new students and tutored classmates who were having difficulty with course material. Helping others helped Jadranka develop her own abilities to explain complicated subject matter, which in turn was of tremendous usefulness when she had to take exams and recite her knowledge of class material.

Student Jadranka spent part of her spare time during the winter transcribing Babáckt Yaga's unpublished research and editing texts for printing. Apart from the dean, Student Jadranka had known Babáckt Yaga better than anyone else at the university, so she knew how her Mistress would have wanted to phrase and express the contents of her notes. The work was important, but also very painful for the transciber. It seemed that Babáckt Yaga was speaking for a final time from the grave. When the transcriptions were finished, she'd have nothing more to say.

As the snow fell and the cold mountain wind whipped around the university, Jadranka often sat by her window, contemplating the bitter weather outside. She was extremely grateful her mind was being given the opportunity to develop and be challenged with new information, but she sorely missed life in Babáckt Yaga's settlement. She missed the late-night sessions with her mentor...she missed the chores and the rough medical training...and she missed her lover Káloyankt. She had known from the beginning that she could never stay with him, but she still deeply cared for him and missed him. There had been an emotional bond with him that she had not been able to find with anyone else. She spent the winter making love to many men, but she couldn't feel attached to any of them.

She wasn't sure why, but by the beginning of March, sex was starting to bore her. After months of being as active as possible, it seemed that every love-making session was like every other love-making session. Worse, it seemed that the male students were indistinguishable from each other. The professors were somewhat more interesting, but none of the older men saw her as an intellectual equal. She wanted to talk, but there was no one to talk to.

Fortunately, Student Jadranka's academic performance did not reflect her increasingly restless state of mind. As the winter months passed and the days lengthened, she continued to perform extremely well in her classes. She finished editing Babáckt Yaga's final journals and wondered what to do next.

Dean Fítoreckt, anticipating a possible crisis over the sudden lack of extra work, decided to send Jadranka into the city as a member of a team of university doctors and medical students. The group also visited the fortifications on the border and attended the needs of the Royal Guards and the cannon crews. The student took special interest in the cannons and how they operated, and in hearing stories about how King Vladik was able to retake the area after the second invasion from the Holy Roman Empire. The men talked confidently about their defenses, but seemed worried about the military situation on the other side of the Duchy, south of Danúbikt Móskt.

In mid-March, Jadranka even had the opportunity to cross the border. A foreign landlord, smart enough to not trust the medical practitioners in his own country, had contracted the university in Sebérnekt Ris to send doctors to attend his wife while she had a baby. The landlord sent his own escort to bring in the Danubians, so they traveled safely. While on the man's estate, the Danubians attended other medical issues of family members and servants, including vaccinations, a couple of operations, and disinfecting bedrooms. The trip to the foreign manor was considerably more pleasant than the previous year's trading expedition, but when she returned to Sebérnekt Ris, Jadranka and the others realized they had brought back lice.

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On the first day of April, 1753, Jadranka abruptly stopped having sex with her classmates. She had long been bored with her lifestyle and her memories of Káloyankt and Ermin made her realize that she'd never find a partner if she continued making herself available to every man who came her way. What she had been doing might be acceptable for a Follower, but the Cult's Path in Life no longer was available to her. The Cult of the Ancients was gone and Jadranka understood she had to find a new identity. With no serious relationship and no group with whom she could say she belonged, she did not have an assigned place in her country's society. She felt adrift, every bit as much as she had felt adrift during those first days of traveling between Rika Héckt-nemát and Starívktaki Móskt. Her only consolation was that as long as she remained a student, the problem of not having an identity was not as serious as it would be if she were still wandering the country roads.

Jadranka was not only bored with sex. She became bored with the entire university and its monotonous routine of classes, studying, military practice, and daily runs. She knew that her performance would be satisfactory through the end of the academic year in June, but she pondered whether or not she really wanted to return for the 1753-1754 school year. Ironically, the visits to the fortifications and the foreign manor made her less satisfied with her academic life by reminding her of the world that existed beyond her bed-chamber, the library, and the lecture halls.

Jadranka's problem was feeling unable to talk to anyone about her feelings. She fully understood that she needed to be grateful to Dean Fítoreckt for setting her up with free enrollment and residency in a very nice room. For a young person from a dishonored and impoverished background, her situation was ideal. But she was increasingly restless and dissatisfied. Why?

Her thoughts returned to her heroine Lilith and the power she held over the righteous. Power...that was one thing Jadranka did not have. As a woman in Danubian society, she never would have any power, assuming she wanted to lead a "respectable" life and marry a man capable of taking care of her. She had been right about Káloyankt: at first glance he had been perfect for her, but she could not have tolerated living the restricted life of an upper-class wife, even if she could have ingratiated herself into his neighbors' society, which was highly doubtful.

She had hoped to achieve power through sex. Before scandal overtook her in Dagurúckt-Tók, using sex to control men seemed a promising Path in Life. That belief seemed to be confirmed when she played Lilith during the Cult's final act of vengeance against the Priest who had sought to destroy it. She had tried the same strategy at the university, with no results. She pleased her lovers and for a while pleased herself, but after months of continuous copulating, her standing in the university was exactly what it had been the day she enrolled.

So...what did the university offer? Yes, she was developing her intellect, but for what purpose? The best she could hope for upon graduating would be a position as a scribe for a city official or being the doctor of a wealthy family. In either situation she would live out her life as a pampered servant, taking orders from some man or some woman whose social status was higher than hers. Already she was taking orders, constantly standing in front of her professors trying to satisfy them with how much she had learned. The entire routine was irritating her more and more.

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Note: Geologists surveying the northern mountains with seismic imaging located a series of caves and tunnels deep under the location believed to be the former site of the Altar of Blood Nourishment. However, after consulting with the Grand Prophets of the Danubian Church, Prime Minister Vladim Dukov prohibited any further exploration and ordered the area to be incorporated into the National Park System. The Danubian Church is now officially responsible for administering the location. The site will never be excavated and will never be made accessible to anyone, even archeologists. The only existing map of the area based on the recent imaging is stored in the vault in the Prime Minister's office.

- Maritza Ortskt-Dukovna -