The Song of Roland Ch. 18

Carl ignored Roland. He only had eyes for Kelsea. "I've done as you've commanded; I've stayed my hand from throttling this traitorous prick behind me, and I've lied to religious psychotics for you. I could have left a dozen times since yesterday, but instead I stayed." His hand touched her face. "Does that count for nothing?"

Kelsea reached up, removing his fingers from her skin. The tips of them lingered atop her cheek for a moment before she managed to pull them off. Carl let out a laugh. "The only thing worse than being a tool is being one that isn't used." He said, shaking his head. His hands clenched into shaking fists. "You really are a Demon, aren't you?"

Without a word, Carl turned sharp upon his heel, stepping across the shallow room and closing the door behind him. A silence fell upon the hut as Roland made a ponderous effort to retrieve his sword and dagger, strapping them about his waist as he made a few adjustments to his attire, pulling at the fabric. It stayed that way, the click of buckles and shifting fabric giving a keening layer of action to the intransigence.

"What should I... what should we do with him, Roland?" Kelsea asked, she sat up on the bed and pulled her knees to her chest. "I can tell he... 'needs' me, now."

Of course he does. Roland pulled his puffed sleeves up his wrists, giving his hands a little freedom to grasp his sword hilt more freely. He lifted and lowered the rondel in its scabbard. It was light, long-necked and cumbersome. He gave a grunt of disapproval at its feel. "I can cut his throat, if you'd like." He was only half-joking. "Should solve the problem."

"Yours, maybe." She said, "Not mine. It's my fault he's here, now. You were the one who told me I should leave him."

"I also told you to leave me on the High Road." He said, turning to face her. "Turns out I was wrong about that bit, maybe I'm wrong on this one, too." Kelsea's expression lit up when she saw him in his new outfit. "...What is it?"

"You look nice." She said, bashful in her reticence. "Very, uh... 'lordly.'"

"Gods," He said, fingering his dagger with unease. "Don't joke about such things."

"But you do!" She said, pushing herself with some struggle off the bed to her feet. She wobbled a bit, but Roland steadied her. "Next time we're in bed, you can call me 'm'lady,' and I'll call you-" She took him by the arms, leaning up to kiss him on the neck, a gentle peck against the spot she'd all but frenzied a few minutes before. "M'lord." She intoned, lowering her head in subservience like a proper commoner, though her eyes peeked at him from beneath her bangs.

"You've got a working girl's tongue, my lady." He replied, pressing his lips to hers. His hands drifted downwards to her hindquarters. One of them took her tail by the base, circling it with his fingers as he ran his hand down it. She purred in pleasure, leaning against him as her own fingers roamed across his chest. Roland couldn't stop himself, her tail swaying in his grasp as the thick thing turned and undulated to his touch. It seemed to be a sensitive spot for her.

"Haaah!" She groaned, biting her lip. "R-Roland."

"Do you like this?" He asked, she nodded at him. "Me too." There was a strange feeling of conquest as Kelsea huddled into him, her eyes closing as her breathing came and went to the stroke of his hand against her tail. Despite the terror of the previous minutes, he found himself falling into her trap yet again, unable to escape the spiralling need to have her near him at all times. The tip of her tail wrapped around his leg, squeezing every time he reached a ways down the length of it, letting him start anew at the base. Her hips began to move back and forth against him. Roland felt a momentary flash of triumph at having bested Carl in seducing her, keeping his mistress for his own-

The thought jarred him. As if realizing where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing, Roland yanked himself back, blinking hard as the murky sluggishness of his perception fell away and he returned to his senses. Roland pulled away, and Kelsea gave him a questioning look, "What-" She said, but he stepped back, freeing all but his entrapped leg from her narcotic touch. The soft appendage clung to him, trying to draw him back. "Why did you stop?"

"I..." Roland found himself panting, out of breath, inundated with emotion. He shook his head from side to side, rippling his mane of red across his face as he tried to hide his blush behind his thick beard. "I've got to see the Priest, before the prayers are done. I need to get back before they send the Fire Priestess to help. I want to stay, but..."

"But?" She asked, refusing to let him escape the flimsy excuse unchallenged. She was learning how to toy with him. Her tone was so pitch-perfect, so delectable in its honest innocence that he almost believed that she was sincere. "You said 'I' four times there, Roland, yet you don't want to do any of those things, do you?" The spider's thread was pulling him into the web again.

"Stop it." He muttered, looking away. "I've spent too much time in here, already."

"Not nearly enough." Kelsea replied, deep-throated and enticing. "I'm still here, Roland. For you."

"Kelsea." He said, looking her in the eyes. "You've got to let me go, right now. The Priest knows what you are, and if you keep me too long, he'll know you own me."

The truth of his words seemed to filter through her head. A perturbed expression came to her face when he made his proclamation, before it warped into a look of dread. She shook her head, stepping away as her tail uncurled. She made herself sit flat upon the bed. "Oh." She looked down at the ground, her eyes tracing the purple pigmentation of her bare legs. "R-right. I'm..." She hunched forward. "I'm sorry, go on ahead."

Roland bent down on one knee, taking her chin in hand as he kissed her once upon the lips. "I'll be back soon, my lady. Keep under the covers till I get back, and you'll be fine."

"I won't." She whispered, matching his eyes. "But thank you." Roland hurried from the room to escape the graveyard expression written across her face.

As he moved into the open air of the lengthening afternoon, Roland felt the heavy drop of snowfall upon his head spilling from the drowning sky. The grey heavens were getting darker, and even now the light was fading in the high altitudes. The fog had become so heavy that not even the looming giant of the mountain could be seen, the mist moving forward like an encroaching hedgerow towards the town. It was strange, this weather, like a hand was reaching out with obscuring claws to rake the ground with its talons.

There was a crunch of snow behind him. Roland spun around, his hand reaching for his blade, but it was only Bogdan who stood there, the priest of grim tidings and sombre vocation. He smiled at the mercenary with his bloodless lips.

"You were earlier than I expected." He said, "Carl tells me that you're usually more... involved with her, than this."

Roland did not leave his tensed position. "Carl is a liar and a murderer." He said, "You can't take anything he says as true."

Bogdan's dark eyes stared through him. "Truely? Your words amuse me: they're the same ones that Carl said about you." His skeletal hands spread themselves, "To whom do you think I should grant my belief?"

"No one." Roland said, "You don't know either of us, Priest."

The Death worshipper tilted his head to the side, a bemused grin flitting across his face, exposing yellowed teeth. "Hm. A fascinating perspective; the first difference I've seen between you... besides the ardour of your worship."

"I don't believe in the Gods." Roland said.

Bogdan's expression evened, his hand reaching out to indicate that Roland should follow. "I wasn't meaning them." His narrow body moved past Roland, a cold breeze preceding him. "-Though she is a piece of the divine, in a way. Wouldn't you agree?"

"I wouldn't know." Roland replied, his hand still atop the rondel at his waist. Its leather pommel allayed his unease. "She's just a Succubus to me."

"Curious then, the way you've supported her in her hour of need," Bogdan turned to look at him, the color of his eyes looking like slabs of black granite in the fallow light. "Were she 'just' a Succubus, you wouldn't have begged for her safety so ardently, I think." Roland didn't respond, staring straight ahead as they walked. "Am I wrong in my assumption?"

"You are." Roland said. He matched the Priest's silent steps, following the winding path through the abandoned buildings towards the rear gate, pointing towards the mountain, from the opposite direction from whence they'd entered earlier. There was a second, taller gatehouse, with slanted roofs and two separate towers looming far taller than the rest of the palisade. As the Priest spoke Roland glanced around, noting the architecture and layout of the town. It was crowded with small buildings and rough hovels, but remained unnervingly empty. His brow tightened into a scowl.

"What is your vocation, Roland?" Bogdan said, folding his hands over themselves as he walked, his head tilted downwards as if in pious contrition. "Your true one, not the lie you fed Orin at the gate."

"Killing things." He said, noting that they were walking amongst a series of small barns, where a myriad of animals would be kept. The stalls were empty, gaping like mouths made of oaken beams and flat roofs. The communal pens held only stray piles of moldy hay on their vacant floors. "Mostly foreign creatures, sometimes sentient things, when the pay is good enough."

"A slayer of monsters, then?" Bogdan said, "-Or at least, what our kind term them to be. I take it you were hired then to dispose of the Hautviech? Perhaps by Arjal or Dornich."

"Neither." Roland said, "It was an accident we ever saw the thing. Carl was the one who shot out its eye, I nearly lost my life to it."

"...A good thing that your own monster saved you, then." Bogdan said, stopping at the foot of the gate, his hand leaning on the hinge to the stairwell leading to the parapet. "A Demon's pet does have one perk: the ability to regenerate his wounds, at the cost of his own purity. I bet she was doubly hard to resist once she'd given you a good licking, hm?" Roland's knuckled were white against his weapon. "So she ensnared you, did she? You were paid, to put out a little coven in town, but perhaps with drink in your belly you let your guard down."

"Something like that."

Bogdan laughed, a chilling thing that sounded strained and aberrant to the ear. He pulled open the heavy door, revealing a spiralling wood staircase. "A man of few words. I can respect that, though not trust it. To be frank, I prefer you to your mouthy friend. At least you do not try to come up with false excuses for your presence here; you simply give none."

"We can leave now, If you'd like, Necromancer." Roland said, following the thin man's footsteps as they made the short but steep climb to the top of the tower. "I've yet to see a single person besides the gate guards in this town of yours. I wonder how many of your 'congregation' are still living, and not your cronies."

Bogdan laughed again, this time sounding genuinely amused. "Ah, slayer, if only you knew my 'place' in this community, you would bite your tongue in embarrassment. I am at best a thing to be tolerated, not the master of a charnel house. The other Gods and their adherents are- shall we say - jaundiced in their opinions. It's to be expected: Horax has ever been the God of the spurned and the damned. Never moreso, than after his greatest sin."

He placed a narrow hand atop the parapet, staring at the ever approaching wall of mist. Roland stood, impassive with the droplets of snow peppering his face. He squinted in the blowing winds. Bogdan continued, "The fog is always a sign: fell powers drift up from the Deepmines and call this unnatural weather upon us. We will be attacked tonight, likely by some number of them." He glanced at Roland. "What do you think of our defenses?"

"Which?" Roland answered. "The inner wall, or these flimsy matchsticks you've jammed into the ground?"

"We keep the women and children in the Inner Cloister, of course." Bogdan said, "But thick stone does not save you, when your crops are on the outside. These demons are clever, they destroy and dismantle what they can. They're far more coordinated than some simple pack of Imps in search of bodies to violate. Something is directing them, and if we leave them to do their foul work on the Outer Cloister, we'd starve within a month."

"Then leave." Roland replied, "Just a glance at these walls tell me they'll be inside in minutes. You've got two gates and no other parapets, these can't be defended unless you're hiding an army behind the inner walls."

"We've about two dozen men." Bogdan said, "Most of them over or underage. None are trained in the arts of war. We're a community, Roland, not a war party. Besides, we cannot leave; this is our home, the only place we know where we can practice our religion in peace."

"-So long as the Imps don't sack the town." Roland said, turning to him. "If they win this fight, you know what will happen."

"Of course." Bogdan said, shrugging as he leaned upon the parapet's edge, staring out at the snowy earth beyond. "They'll rape the men, women and children. They'll destroy everything, desecrate the churches and kill those who resist too much to make it worth the trouble to ravish. Whoever survives the first trauma will remain their slaves for the rest of their short lives, which thankfully won't be long for most, save those they 'convert.'"

The Priest smiled at his grisly prediction, a razor-cut across his lips that made Roland look away in discomfort. "Ironic, isn't it? That the very children spawned of my God's greatest sin would return to ruin all the others?"

"I wouldn't know." Roland said.

"Wouldn't you?" Bogdan said, glancing backwards. The wind kicked up, and Roland felt the biting cold blow across his clothing with a slight shiver. "After all, you're in the thrall of one of her daughters."

"I'm a hunter of beasts, not a reader of scripture." Roland said, "The holy books rarely ever help when trying to kill your quarry."

"Ah, a 'practical' man then." Bogdan said, "This tale would not have come from any book you read, as it is a closely guarded secret amongst the faithful of Horax. A shame you did not grow up amongst the Cloister, we all are taught the story, unlike your lowlander priests." His smile was crooked, pulling and twisting about his pale face. "Care for a small sermon, Roland? I promise, it will be of use to you in your... struggles."

"I've little choice in the matter." He said, "You have a captive audience."

Bogdan's eyes twinkled with ghoulish mirth. "How right you are. More than you know, I think." He straightened his back, standing in his dark clothing with his arms spread wide, his voice growing in strength as he began. "Horax is my God, my lord. The Deity of Death. You know this, of course: every misguided lunatic with a dream to live forever will name themselves Necromancer, perverting his exanimate gifts in the name of discovering life everlasting, of conquering death and ruling over the unliving in return."

Bogdan shook his head, as if befuddled by the very notion. "What all these misled dupes fail to understand is that you do not conquer death; it conquers you. Horax asks for no adherents, for we are all his playthings in the end. Why ask for a thing, that you can take for yourself in the end? That is my God's creed, and it is why I am content to have no followers, save those who dwell in the village graveyard."

"Then why tell me this, Priest?" Roland said, "You want me to be your next disciple, yeah?"

"No, Roland. Though you already are, in a fashion." Bogdan said, stepping forward across the parapet. Roland noticed that the gate was empty of people besides them. The Volkhv's footsteps were soft, yet echoed in the hooded chamber like booming stomps. "When the world was young, there were eight great forces that formed this reality. Eight divine powers, the very element of existence. Horax was the first: the god of the Void, of nothingness, of the beginning and the end. Think of him as the border to a circle, the defining boundary within which all other laws and powers exist. He is not beloved, nor appreciated, yet he is essential to the perpetuation of this fickle existence."

"Though he was the first, more came in his place, fashioning this world to their liking. But soon the great Gods grew bored of twisting the staid earth and malleable sky, and so the youngest of their kind, the Beast Goddess Excellia, hit upon an idea. She mated with the Goddess of Love, Amphara, and birthed the first life: the birds and lesser beasts that we see today. From this union came still more, and in time Excellia made the Beastfolk, firstborn of the sentient races." Bogdan's voice was low, a whisper on the wind as a calamitous gust rose up. Roland found himself transfixed. "In time, each God or Goddess laid with the Goddess of Love in turn, bearing from her divine womb all the races of the world: the stoic Dwarves, the vine-grown Elves and fire-hearted Mankind, even the inscrutable Mer. Seven Gods, each with their chosen folk, born of the magic of their parents and thus beholden to them in abilities and temperament."

Bogdan turned away, a strange expression building on his face, as if he could not countenance facing Roland as he spoke. "...But there was one God, who could not create. In his solitary attempt to bear beings of his own inclination, Horax merely gave rise to the magics of the undead. It makes sense: Horax is a God of Domination, of absolute rulership and control. Free will is anathema to him, a contradiction of the unyielding boundaries on which he places on reality. He could only rule those others who had fallen into his domain. Yet despite his ghastly appearance, even the God of Death dreamed of love, and of offspring."

Bogdan lowered his head, his thinning gray locks trailing down the back of his neck. "Amphara would not give herself to him; she saw Horax as the end of love, the termination of affection and mortality. What, she argued, could she bear, when all he made was unlife and entropy? She was passion personified: love and lust and sensation. Amphara only sought to feel affection and return it in kind. What could he create with her? What could Death possibly offer her?"

He turned to face Roland, a darkness on his face. "You know what he created, don't you?"

"Demons." Roland replied, grave in complexion.

"Heh... a charitable name for them, though not wholly the truth." Bogdan shifted in place. "It was not his intent to create them, nor hers, as it turned out. When Amphara spurned him a final time, Horax's forbearance snapped in twain. He defiled her, as only a God of Domination can. Horax befouled the holy act of sexuality, taking her in the very manner of her own authority." Bogdan's lips pulled down in severe cheerlessness. "It was neither peaceful, nor gentle. He used her, and corrupted her irrevocably with his blasphemy. With Horax's essence forced within her, the Goddess of Love became something... different."

Roland felt something stir in his soul when he thought of Kelsea in that moment. The Death Priest continued. "She was changed. The love she bore was twisted to jealousy, what tainted affection she could give became predicated on how much she gained in return. Amphara lost connection with her own divinity, she took on the traits of her tormentor, becoming twisted by the very perversion of her nature. In that moment, Amphara died, and the first Demon was born."