Eviscence

The impression of a hand hovering over the side of my face flees with a sharp silver flash, dagger in my grasp without need for thought.

So, we’re getting inventive this time, are we? Good, I’ve come to hate extended waits.

The hooded figure crouched across the room freezes, silhouetted against the vague light seeping through a latticed partition. Wasn’t expecting me to wake, was it, hm? “Simply slice my throat in my sleep and expect that to be the end of it, do you?”

It shudders at the soft sound of my voice, shifting as if looking for an escape.

“You should know better.” Atsukute comes to my hand from where she lay quietly in her sheath by my futon, dark and glinting, her flames quiet for now. She doesn’t need to be lit for this.

The devil darts for the entrance.

And jerks to a halt with a surprisingly high cry as a red cord whips around it, blood writhing from a quick slash across my arm. The sound is familiar, somehow. That’s not right.

Come to think of it, the floor’s polished, the woven mats pristine and unfrayed, not one missing. Unlike a few segments of my mind, it seems.

There’s something... off, about this.

I narrow my eyes as it struggles uselessly, something like a distant voice shrieking in my ears. An open fissure in the city? No, closer, muffled.

The clatter of a partition becoming a sliding door is my only warning.

Spinning, I neatly intercept a black ichor dart with the flat of my blade. But instead of lunging into the silver flash, the attacking figure jerks back, threads writhing wildly about its head. I’d leap out of the way but my limbs refuse to move easily.

I feel strangely ill—slow, weak, tired, almost feverish. Somehow, still none of those ichor cords manage to touch.

I’m at a disadvantage. Where’s Seelis?

The second devil lunges, the first screeching, and more converging on us from the feel of it searing through my scars. Warding it back, careful not to cut any ichor free, I slice another red wound and snap a second cord around the devil, binding those threads.

If nothing else, I can drain them for the ichor. That should help the weakness. Shouldn’t it?

I hesitate. Weakness... if I do I’ll cough it up— too weak, not used to it. Not used to it? Why... wouldn’t I be? It’s been years since I....

Something... about this devil seems... oddly familiar. There’s another, nearby. Three...? Or four....

My searching fingers find something slick, burning with a strange heat, on the side of my neck: a line thin as a fishing thread, pulsing through my skin like a leech.

No, just one.

Because these aren’t immissures.

Inventive indeed. Dropping them with a growl, I let Atsukute flare and hiss savagely through the real ichor cord, white flames sizzling like fireworks back to the source. Not inventive enough.

“My apologies.” I tear what’s left free of my neck as an inhuman, demonic scream knifes through the night, the white flames only stinging faintly before the rest of the ichor disappears in writhing crimson. “Stay out of the way, I can’t tell you apart from it right now. And I’d rather not cut off the wrong head.”

I have a feeling I should know them. It’ll come back to me soon enough. I can deal with the damage done then.

Kicking the partition off its tracks, I lunge after the dark figure scrambling away, its sleeve still on fire. Two disguised devils, actually, but only one hasn’t come from the servants’ quarters. The other stumbles while the one runs, moving too wrongly for a hallucination stamped over a real human.

Thrown from my hand, Atsukute sinks into a very real wall of ichor, too thin to prevent a hissing snarl from the other side. My quarry, then.

It scuttles for the door. Pathetic. I flash a cord ahead of it, imbuing the latticed wood and waxed paper with a touch, strengthening and locking it in place. Its path blocked, the immissure whirls to face the measured stride of my bare feet, hunched low to the ground, twin embers glinting in the shadows of its hood.

Lunch, dinner... and now midnight morsel. “If you really think you’re the first to try that trick, you’re a century or two and a few thousand attempts late.”

Ichor flies for my face with its hiss. I slice the strand easily, red cords of my own consuming the cut-off segment before it can attempt to bury itself in an eye or explode into spines. Cut off the head of a snake and it can still bite.

“You should know, if Ilempo didn’t tell you—” I let Atsukute fly as it screams and drops the remains of its flaming cord before holy flames can consume it again “—that I don’t like people tampering with my mind.”

The wall behind it takes that moment to cut itself away, revealing a figure outlined by a light hovering over her shoulder and slicing streaks of rain. Atsukute immediately quivers to a halt, barely a moment from pinning the devil’s skull to her breast.

Well, well, speaking of tampering....

Long nails like claws glitter in the light, hair shimmering like oil; eyes like black pits.

“Ah, a real devil.”

I shove the blade forward, skimming the side of the immissure’s head as it finally twitches away. All control, all imbuings, snap free before the gilded chains can yank tight around my throat. It’s not me who scatters blackened blood.

The chains jerk me to my knees as a gasp catches my ear. I nearly taste blood on my teeth. I can barely breathe, let alone move, but I can still smile.

She twists away from the hooded figure, barely avoiding its cords, Atsukute clattering to the ground, hissing out in the rain. For all her skill with words and manipulation, she never spent as long fighting fissure devils. No, she became one instead.

Fitting, that one should turn on her.

If only it intended to stay and finish the job. Instead, it runs past, disappearing into the rain, leaving her to lean against the wall’s edge with a grimace, clutching at her bloodied side.

I chuckle. “Does my holy flame’s blade sting, dearest sister?”

The dark pits of those eyes bore into me. Delightful. An absolutely beautiful sight, nearly enough to make a man giddy.

“Did it touch you?” Her voice is icy as the grave. I can’t help grinning, perhaps a tad demonically, myself. “...Or is this your fractured sanity making a reappearance?”

“You should know.” The bitter sting of ichor catches my tongue with a cough around tightening chains, and I smile. “Chains, eviscence, it’s all the same in the end.”

Her face hardens to stone. With a clench of her hand, said chains spark into visible existence, crackling white.

That should have warned me.

I’m not sure if I scream or vomit, really. Considering the position I’m in, paralysed and abruptly scoured from the inside out with fire, I would hope my insides don’t rebel that way, as I’ll likely end up choking. Not a nice way to go.

Ugh.

Why... why am I kneeling on a woven mat in the Guardians’ house trussed in chains? With a pounding headache and a double dose of nausea, no less.

There’s a hole in the wall. I see that as I squint up through the stinging sweat in my eyes at a hazy visage that looks an awful lot like sister—the younger version, at least. She’s wounded, from the way she holds her side. Hard to tell how badly in this light. Can’t see that well in the dark yet.

I... did that. Atsukute’s blade glints faintly on the cobblestones lined under the eaves. I did that, yes.

The side of my neck and face throbs miserably, louder than my shoulder. Of course he went for the eviscence. Pump the essence of a devil into my veins, why not. I grind my teeth, attempting not to cough up anything at all. At least these chains are keeping me propped up. I’d fall on my face right now, trembling, still-tender, and battered as I am.

“Well?”

“I’m fine, now,” I puff. “Please, don’t zap me again.”

“Zap?” Her mutter’s barely audible as she pushes away from the wall. “I’m not sure if I trust anything you say, but you feel clearer. I’d still appreciate an explanation.”

“Eviscence can bring out one’s inner bastard,” I offer, still catching my breath, and clench my jaw against the urge to cough up my insides. “Little known side-effect, didn’t you know.”

Sels and Meil.... I didn’t hurt anyone, from the hazy black-edged memory. Not intentionally, at least. It could have happened. It’s happened before.

“Where are the others?” I test ineffectively at the chains, weak as water. “Are they alright?”

Sels is only the size of a cat. I could have sliced her neck with one wrong twist of a cord. Not after all that trouble of bringing her here, finding her before she was meant to be found. If I hurt her....

The chains ease their hold, letting me stumble up and back towards a light glimmering past a damaged partition lying on the floor. Which one was she? I remember letting her take a cushion in the same room—foolish, I should have expected something like this—so she most likely would have been the first fake I spotted.

One dagger slash, a threatening with Atsukute, and smothering with cords.... I’m not going to be in her good graces.

Two faces snap up as I catch myself on the flimsy wall’s edge, panting. There’s no smell of blood, apart from my own—nothing I can see in my wavering vision. That’s the most important thing. Feelings can be patched over; lost lives can’t be brought back.

“You’re alright.” I exhale, smiling at their wary expressions, Sels all but coiled for an attack. “Good.”

And I promptly collapse.