Arc 9: Chapter 6: Kiss of the Succubus |
It was many days after my visit to the Candrian’s House that I visited the physik he’d directed me to, his “mind surgeon.” It took me an entire morning and part of an afternoon to track him down, even with directions and my experience navigating those streets.
Rot Voraag was massive, with many neighborhoods and districts, but generally divided into four dominant quarters — the Bow Quarter and Aft Town fell beneath the shadows of the great arching towers that jutted at the northern and southern termini of the sprawl, and between them lay the Ring Districts about the mesa, where most of the guilds and faction halls lay. That last did resemble a ring, with an outer tier of the mesa itself spiraling in fragmented canyons coated in towers and tenements.
And above it all lay the Akropolis, the city within the city which belonged to the Exalted alone.
My quarry lay in Aft Town, in an expansive, mean neighborhood known to the locals as the Nails. The baleful sun sweltered over the streets that day. A brooding haze clung to everything, and everywhere I could hear the sound of flies.
I went in human guise, dressed as a merchant in turmeric and carmine robes, my face shadowed by a black veil. Though daylight did not scorch me so long as I maintained human form, I was now known to the city and veils were a mark of prestige, just one step down from the mask of a guilder.
The Nails weren’t much to look at. Just another of the many overcrowded, bloodstained neighborhoods scattered across the wasteland metropolis. There were tall spires of stone rising throughout, tall needles aimed in impotent rancor at the glaring sky. No doubt they were the source of the neighborhood’s name. Some had been mined out to make more room for the locals, hive-like cave tenements in which hundreds might have dwelt unseen.
There was no official policing force in the city. The Exalted guarded himself and his own, leaving all others to fend for themselves. Like many of its neighboring hives, the Nails were protected by a local gang, armed ruffians who marked themselves with violent hairstyles and improvised armor. They paid me little mind, more interested in protecting their territory from invasion launched by neighbors. A brothel stood at the end of the street, of a particularly lower class than the Candrian’s House. Its girls screeched and heckled at me as I passed them by, thinking I was one of their own kind intruding on their territory. They reminded me of my sister succubi.
The rest of the neighborhood proved hardly more welcoming, and I soon realized I was misplaced there with my dyed garments and veil. A group of three men, members of the local guard tribe, tried to petition me to hire them as bodyguards, following me halfway down the street before the sight of a Justikaar shambling out of a tavern made them back off. The vigilante was hungover and hadn’t put on all his armor properly, but the three thugs weren’t foolish enough to trifle with him.
When I finally did find the house I’d spent more than half that day seeking, I thought at first I’d been fooled. It did not look like any kind of hospital, but just another ramshackle with a leaky roof. One of the city’s countless strains of fast-growing, nearly sentient mold had made a good effort at covering the westward wall, and the other inhabitants of the street had tossed bodies, waste, and trash by the door. The pile stank like hell — and no, I do not say that as euphemism — and was ravaged by flies.
A gargoyle. Was it alive, or just a scarecrow placed there to frighten off imps? Either way, it stood out. I leaned closer, trying to see through one of the building’s windows, but they were all boarded up.
“Step forward, trollop, and I will turn to you to pulp.”
I froze at the sound of that rumbling voice, then returned my attention to the statue. “So, you are still alive in that moldering shell. Tell me, brute, is your master in? I have business with him.”
The statue did not, had not, moved an inch. Its dog’s face remained fixed firmly forward, but the voice emanated from it like an echo through a brass tube. “He has no business with guilders, bankers, or whores. Be on your way.”
I folded my hands and planted myself in front of the creature. “I am here on behalf of the Candrian’s House in the Bow Quarter.”
I could almost imagine a sigh shuddering through its shoulders. The guardian’s sepulchral voice did not alter in inflection, but I detected an unsubtle edge of impatience. “I could have guessed you crawled from such a place. The master does not seek your company, doxy. Return to your pimp and leave us be.”
“That is the third time you have insulted me,” I said in an icy voice. “We do not know one another, and I am beginning to become offended.”
“I smell you for what you are,” the gargoyle muttered, and though it still did not move, I felt its attention fix on me as plainly as though a beam of daylight had broken through the sickly clouds. “I will not let you near my master, Abgrûdai. The onlything preventing me from ripping you free of that chameleon skin is that you have not yet crossed my threshold.”
It was no idle threat. Though he seemed static, the speed and ferocity with which he could move would be explosive.
I’d almost forgotten how annoying gargoyles could be. Gritting my teeth in exasperation I said, “I have no intention of devouring your master’s soul, dog. I will ask one more time, and then I shall become displeased! Tell your master that Lady Wurmwing seeks him.”
The gargoyle did not hurl more insults at me. There was a long pause, and after a minute I thought the creature had returned to dormancy. I suppressed an angry hiss, and almost tried going through him — it would be risky. No amount of street muck would make the sentinel less dangerous, and they were made to fight demons.
But then it rumbled at me again, and this time the sullenness in its voice was not masked. “The master will see you.”
It fell silent. I waited a beat before skirting past it. Gargoyles were deceitful creatures, and not above luring prey to cross their thresholds and give them an excuse, but I sensed the hostility in the creature to be suppressed. I took one furtive step closer, tensed, but nothing happened.
The guardian said nothing as I moved to the door and knocked. A pause, then it opened seemingly on its own, ushering me into a dimly lit foyer. It wasn’t exactly clean, though I could tell someone had made an effort. One of the city’s mutant rats, almost a small dog, brazenly sniffed at me from the base of a stair. A clay table with some chairs stood by a small window, but that window had been boarded up and the table beneath it was cracked, a piece of it lying on the floor. I could hear muffled sobbing somewhere deeper within the house.
No sooner had the door closed behind me than a man came around the corner, perhaps from a kitchen or workshop. Too young to be the one I sought. I took him for an assistant. He looked to be in his mid twenties, his lanky frame dressed in light brown robes that might have once been dyed red. He had a morose face, dark complexioned, his tired eyes shadowed by a mop of dust-brown hair.
“I am deeply sorry,” he said with a wince. His voice held a slight rasp as though from dehydration or illness. “That damn sentinel is always in a foul mood, I told him I was expecting someone… You’re here from the clinic, yes, about my letter? The apparatus?”
He seemed to take in my appearance then, blinking his exhaustion-hollowed eyes. Hazel eyes. A frown touched his lips. “You are not from Katia’s clinic.”
“No,” I told him. My, I thought, but time does pass so quickly in their world.
The man began to grow angry. “I have no business with the Guilds! Not with any alchemist, tallyman, or slaver. Now, I apologize for the misunderstanding, but I must ask you to leave.”
He gestured toward the door. He had an anxious way about him, his eyes sliding from my face as he spoke, a notable twitch in his neck. A nervous tic, or the result of some past trauma?
“I am here on behalf of the Candrian,” I said and began to pace about his house, folding my hands before my navel as though I were a prospective buyer studying my acquisition. Someone continued to sob further in, the noises muffled but incessant.
“The Candrian?” The young man blinked again and relaxed. “Ah… You’re here about Dedo.”
“Is Master Arupal in?” I asked.
“…No.” A hesitance touched the man’s words. “He died a month ago. The plague.”
I inclined my head. “Then you are the master of this house?”
The young assistant sketched a stiff bow. “I am the caretaker of the doctor’s works, though I would hardly call myself master of any of them. I’ve been cataloguing all of Arupal’s research, trying to keep the Guilds from thieving it, taking care of his patients… We’ve always had problems with the neighborhood, but it got worse after the doctor died. I had to drag that gargoyle here from one of the old temples, nearly died doing it, but I haven’t had a burglary since, so…”
He shrugged, then seemed to realize he’d been rambling. “Would you like tea, ma’am? Or, is it kyria…”
The titles of kyria and kyrios were only given to those prestigious individuals recognized as true contributors to the city in the eyes of the Exalted. Though I had presented Ekasne, I was merely one of the masses, a known name but no citizen.
“Lady Wurmwing, some call me.” I turned to find him studying me, and knew he was trying to see through my veil. “May I see Dedo?”
I could tell he recognized my epithet, for he frowned. “You are from the black markets. A gang lord.”
Is he a fool, I wondered, or just fearless? “I am member of a Lodge,” I told him coolly. “And mean you no harm. As I said, I am here on behalf of the Candrian. I mean to find out who has been murdering his employees.”
The man considered that a moment. “Well, Dedo is in very delicate condition. He has gotten better… He helps me clean and tend the others, but he won’t go outside, and he won’t speak. I don’t know what you will be able to accomplish, lady, but I would prefer not to upset him.”
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“I would prefer to discover the identity of they who harmed him,” I retorted. “Now…” I paused and regarded him. “What was your name?”
I realized that I hadn’t gotten it the last time.
“Narahn,” he said and tilted his head. “May I know your name, or is it simply Lady Wurmwing?”
He already knew my name, but I did not think it would expedite this to remind him. I was tempted, but it would be a sadistic whim and I had other business. “That will suffice. Now, Narahn, I have no intention to threaten you.”
His face hardened. “But you aren’t giving me a choice, is that it? I’ve heard how the Lodges work. So what next, hm? Bruisers at my door? A bottle of devil-fire thrown through my window in the night, the rest of this neighborhood be damned? I’ve faced all this before, you can’t frighten me.”
He was a good bluffer, but I sensed this to be bravado. I spread my hands out. “The one who harmed Dedo is still out there. There is nothing stopping them from returning to finish their work. Be reasonable, Narahn.”
The young man closed his eyes, took in a deep breath through his nostrils, then nodded. “You have a point. Forgive me, Lady Wurmwing. As you can no doubt guess, I receive unwanted visitors often. Master Arupal made many enemies.”
But friends with the Candrian? Interesting.
Narahn considered, then relented with a gesture. “This way.”
He led me upstairs, to a hallway lined in strongly built doors. A few were open, and all were occupied by poorly dressed individuals in various states of distress. I could tell there were more behind the closed doors from the muffled noises within. I passed the weeper’s room, heard them gibbering to themself.
“You do not keep them all restrained?” I asked as we passed an open doorway.
“This isn’t a prison,” Narahn said defensively. “The ones who might hurt themselves or others are kept sedated using a method Master Arupal designed himself. It’s a type of worm allowed to inhabit the spinal tissue. Completely symbiotic, keeps the host calm so long as it’s given enough proteins. Costs a damned fortune to feed all the patients enough, but the alternative is anarchy.”
One sweating man pointed at me as I passed and spoke in a very calm and flat voice, “The pit will be cold, as will be the steel when it moves through your heart, and there will be nothing left but ash, ash, ash, ash—”
Narahn closed the door. I realized I’d paused to listen to the madman. The young physik smiled apologetically. “The worms also give them strange dreams. Don’t pay it any mind. We were in the process of studying whether the symbiosis grants them some kind of sensitivity to… Well, it’s all very technical, but we think they can feel… vibrations? Emanations? Something from other layers of reality.”
“I did not travel all this way for a review of your medicines,” I told him.
“Right.” Narahn coughed. “Well, this way.”
We came to a door at the end of the hall. Narahn knocked on it twice. “Dedo? You have a visitor. We’re going to come in, alright?”
“Does he have one of your worms?” I asked. Such creatures might sense my true nature and act erratically. No animal tolerated my presence, and they seemed apt at sensing it no matter how deeply I folded into a vessel.
Narahn shook his head. “He’s been practically a saint compared to the rest. Has terrible nightmares, but we only give a larva to the violent ones.”
He opened the door, allowing me into a small room. This one had an unsealed window, allowing the city’s sullen sun to shine through. It was sweltering, and indeed the man sitting on the room’s cot had sweat through his clothes. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, though some white already ate through his blond hair. It wasn’t a natural color — too metallic, as though fine wires grew from his skull. His prominent muscles weren’t the result of hard training, I suspected, but rather alchemical tissue injected by a krasis’s needle.
Narahn’s voice became gentle. “Dedo, this woman would like to speak with you. Is that alright?”
The paphian just stared at me dully. His eyes were shiny black, with no sclera or iris visible. It made him look like some herbivore, a deer wondering if it should bolt. His skin had a bronze cast, as false as his curling locks, and his legs ended in metal hooves just like the Butcher Bulls in the Akropolis. He also had two curling horns growing from within his gilt curls. A brass satyr.
Narahn gestured helplessly as the other man kept his reticence. “I told you, he does not speak. He hears, understands, but won’t say a word.”
“I would like some time alone with him,” I said without taking my eyes off of Dedo. He had not looked away from me, either.
Narahn’s voice took on that steely edge again. “That is unacceptable. Forgive me, lady, but I do not know you, and these people are under my protection.”
“Then, for Dedo’s protection, do not try to stop me. It will harm him if you do.”
I drifted closer to the paphian, until I stood over him where he sat on the cot. He looked up at me with dull, almost animal pain. I could see the agony in him, a silent and nameless emptiness reflecting in his shiny black eyes.
There was no guarantee he’d been attacked by the same thing that murdered the girl whose ghost I’d found in the Candrian’s House the past night. But if it was the same, I would sense it. I only needed to look deeper.
“What are you intending to do?” Narahn asked. His voice was flat with suspicion, and I knew if I did not give him something he would call his gargoyle and evict me.
“I am a telepath,” I said. “I will try to see what lies in his memories. If he cannot tell us what happened to him, then I shall see it for myself.”
Narahn shook his head. “Such powers are incredibly dangerous, especially to the psyches of those left with this kind of damage! I cannot allow this.”
“Then you permit his tormentor to walk free?”
Narahn hesitated. “If you hurt him…”
I very well could, but that would be up to Dedo. I ignored the physik, sitting on the cot next to the sweating, miserable chimera, all the while not removing my gaze from his. With slow, deliberate motions, I pinched both corners of my veil and lifted it from my face. Dedo’s eyes widened, and I suspected he might have recognized me.
I took his krasis-sculpted face between my palms, eliciting a shiver from him. He had an inhuman beauty to him as well, though his surgeon had not been as skilled as the one who worked on Arlee. His cheeks were too heavy, the planes of his face terminating at unnaturally sharp angles. He looked more like a brass statue fashioned by one who understood the geometry of beauty, but did not genuinely value it as an artist might.
No words passed between us. I did not offer reassurance or try to soothe him with my voice. I held his gaze until something changed in it, a subtle shift — not an invitation, but acceptance. It was enough.
It is said that the Kiss of a succubus is death. This can be true, though it does not need to be. It is our deadliest weapon, the focus and symbol of our power even as the staff is to the magi or the sword to the knight. Each of us has our own subtle variation on the Kiss. One might use it to slide a tendril into the organs of her prey to implant parasites, while another demoness will deliver a breath of fire that will burn her paramour inside out.
Given either consent or surrender, we are the most effective of all assassins. I once witnessed one of the abyssal queens use her Kiss to make an empyreal warrior unravel. The rest of us had feasted on the wriggling remnants of him.
My Kiss remained weak, at least in comparison to the likes of the elder succubi. Tasting the Urrson’s sickness had been an unexpected boon, provided a potent mixture to the poison. My Kiss was a poison. Deadly, if I wanted it to be, but its effect was more subtle and more insidious than mere murder.
I was in human shape then, which came with risks. I could walk in daylight and go unnoticed to most beings. It also made me weaker, robbed me of my powers. How the gargoyle had realized my nature I wasn’t sure, but it had happened before. There was some flaw in the disguise, one I needed to correct.
I let saliva fill my mouth, worked my jaw, and changed just enough to do my work. My skin paled and my red lips turned blue like a fresh corpse. A forked tongue flicked out from them. Dedo saw it and his face drained of color almost so dramatically as mine did.
Before he could balk, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his.
He flinched, struggled for a moment. I leaned in harder, holding his face. His eyelashes fluttered several times, then relaxed. He closed his eyes, but I kept mine open the whole time in intense focus. Narahn said something behind me, some protest, but I ignored him.
My breath passed into Dedo’s lungs, and I went with it. I entered him — not just with my tongue, though it did force its way past his lips, but also with my ichorous spirit. I needed but a peck upon his mouth to leave my mark, but I wanted to go deeper here, to search inside his soul and see what other thing had wounded it.
Wounded wasn’t the right word at all, I realized almost immediately. Dedo had been mauled, just like the girl at the Candrian’s House, but in his case he hadn’t even been given the mercy of death. It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable of speaking, but that his every waking moment was fixed on trying not to scream.
Be still, I whispered to him from within the chasms of his own mind. Be still. Let me in.
It wasn’t difficult to compel him. He had no strength, and part of him longed for the numbing cold I poured into him. I was like ink eating through clear water as I spread through him. I saw his memories. Flashes of time. A dismal, brief childhood, beatings, hunger, a choice between selling himself to a cutter gang or a brothel, with essentially the same outcome. An all too common story in that city.
He’d chosen to become a paphian, for he did not like violence. The day a krasis made him into the brass satyr he was now had been the most painful of his life, had almost killed him.
I dove deeper. Countless half-forgotten paramours. A bout with the plague that nearly killed him, killed many others he knew. Being invited into the Candrian’s House, kind words from an ivory angel, another man whose face was unclear but seemed to radiate light. A lover? A favored patron?
More. I found the night his limbs had been hacked off the same way an overeager hunter finds a cliff. I didn’t realize I was falling until it was too late. Dedo remembered little of it, not with sight, but there were sounds, the feel of something sharp grinding against his bones. Teeth? A saw.
A voice. Hush, now! Ah, that reminds me…
Whatever it was, it had laughed at the ruin of him. There was something familiar in that sound. It wasn’t unlike the gleeful cackle I’d thrown at the scorchknight all those years ago in Urizen’s lab.
And that scent… The taste on his spirit was familiar too. Exactly what I’d sensed in that room at the brothel. No mortal would have left this stain.
Something was trying to poach in my territory. It would pay.
Dedo sensed my sudden anger and quailed in my grip, whimpered aloud. I wished he hadn’t. His terror excited me, made me want to hook my claws in even deeper. He’d begun to weep, his salty tears touching my own face.
I could take all of him then. He possessed no willpower to resist. I did not need days or weeks of siege on his psyche, had no reason to deliver dose after dose of my poison as I broke down his walls and coaxed him into acts of depravity that would fracture his mental armor with guilt.
With only a small effort, a long inhale, I could drink his soul.
I’d promised the Candrian, true, but what was a promise? Just another easy lie, and one mortals used every day. Just words. Air. I had told him the truth when I said no bargain would bind me.
I was Abgrûdai, the distilled truth of all souls, sifted through the tumults of the Abyss and free of all restraint! My kind had taken the throne of the God-Tyrant and sent the decrepit coward fleeing into the deepest darkness of His own creation. What was a promise to some petty whore-peddler to me?
I was Shyora! I would be queen of this city one day, lay claim to the Exalted’s dominion even as my kindred claimed the Silver City. It would become a vassal kingdom to the prize we’d taken in the higher realms, my gift to demonkind. The lion would swell with pride at my initiative, and the rest would seethe with envy. I would be a demon queen, peer and equal to the eldest abyssals.
Or, perhaps, I would keep it all for myself. Perhaps I would raise it to such glory that I would challenge that higher seat and usurp it. A God-Queen of Heaven, the very dread empress of Primeval Night.
These fantasies had swept me through my time in that place. So what if I still heard the Urrson’s foolish ramblings in the back of my thoughts? He was nothing. I’d proved that by neutering his plague before it was truly born. I was the greater evil.
Please.
The thought came from Dedo. I realized he’d completely relaxed, slumped on the cot so I lay over him. His soul trembled like a guttering candle flame, but he managed to mumble some words through our connection.
Please. Just do it. Make it stop.
The pain. No more.
I hesitated.
In that moment, a strong hand gripped me by the arm and pulled with vicious strength. It was a sudden enough change to startle me, make me lose moments. The soul-link broke, and as I blinked back into material senses I found myself lying on the floor. I’d struck the wall, felt a stinging pain in my shoulder. Dedo lay insensate on the bed, and Narahn stood between us. The physik’s face was thunderous with fury.
“What are you?!” He demanded.
A low chuckle escaped me as I rose. I’d taken a bit of Dedo’s essence, and the heady rush of new strength, even from so broken a spring, made me feel giddy and light. “You can’t mean that you don’t remember me? I surely left some impression.”
Narahn’s anger gave way to confusion. “What are you talking about? I’ve never met you before, I…”
He saw me then. My veil was still lifted back, revealing my face. It would not be the same face, not exactly. No more than his had remained the same in the last ten years.
“I am glad to see you took my advice,” I said as I rose and faced him. “All this time, I believed the Zosite had claimed you as well. Did you ever finish that drawing of me?”
