Chapter 63. Misdirection

ayla’s screams tore through his psyche and he turned his face away from her, clenching his eyes shut as her struggles trembled through the table.  Armand cursed his sensitive mind.  He hated Layla, he should feel nothing for her, and yet her misery was all too human. 

All he had ever wanted was to be left alone.  His dreams of finding a new performing troupe seemed foolish now. Clearly the gods hated him and considered him their play thing.  It was not enough that they had stood by and let the Krytans kill his entire family.  Now they let him walk on the edge of hope only to laugh as he floundered and fell.  His heart was broken, what more did they want? 

Layla sighed, her struggles suddenly at an end.  Armand dared a glance at her, afraid of what he would find.  Her skin was the color of sea foam, cold and white as the corpses in the cave.  She was trembling, her pale eyes staring up into Ashekoroth’s masked visage and past him to the rafters.  The thing that gazed out through Layla’s eyes was no longer human, yet he recognized it, remembered the slow tolling song and cryptic words.  The chains fell away and she rose slowly to her new feet to stand at Ashekoroth’s side.  Her pale hand rested possessively on the black swathed arm of the terrible demon.

“Threnody,” he whispered.  Her stolen eyes gazed sadly upon him, but she made no sound.  A final betrayal before dying.  He swallowed his bitterness and looked away.  Yes, he would die.  Better that than serving a demon for the rest of eternity.

“You will change your mind,” Ashekoroth said harshly, “It is time you ceased your foolish games and obeyed me.”

Armand thrashed helplessly as the demon’s cold hand grasped his scalp and forced him to turn toward Brigit.  Threnody cut loose the harness that propped the warrioress to her feet, leaving her arms bound.  Brigit snarled and rushed at the woman but Threnody stepped out of reach to the other end of the silken noose.  She drew down on the thick cord, wrapping it around a cleat until it lost its slack and drew Brigit upward.  Brigit struggled instinctively, her eyes bulging in alarm as the continued tightening of the cord drew her to attention.  She found her toes and placed her weight upon them, her breath ragged and frightened as she teetered at the brink of strangulation.  Despite the fear and anguish that played upon her grim features, she said nothing, neither crying out nor begging for release.   She was a warrior and allowed herself no pity and gave her foe no satisfaction.  She chose the way of his mother.

Armand felt Ashekoroth within him, watching and feeding upon his raw emotions.  The demon savored his horror, amused that he had found a novel and devastating means of tormenting him.  It was too cruel, so perverted and calculated it filled Armand with a potent surge of rage.

“Damn you, Ashekoroth!  I hate you!  Gods willing, I will be your undoing, even were I made to join you in the very pit of the darkest hell!”

Armand let the sight of Brigit’s torment blur away in an eddy of burning tears.  Something snapped in him, a powerful suicidal urge laced with venom.  He had learned how to hide from his pain, he had forged a steel wall against his grief and loss.  Over the years he had let the pain fester there, knowing that if it were ever to come undone he would lapse into madness. 

Sanity was a frail thing at the best of times, he mused grimly, 

“Devour this, you filthy monster!”

Releasing the gate that had held back years of accumulated grief and terror, a small part of him stood aside, detached and bitter.  He watched grimly as the demon gorged itself, its eyes flaring with renewed chaotic potential behind the translucent green mask.

“I will never serve you,” Armand said quietly.

Ashekoroth removed the mask of jade, revealing a churning void of nothingness where his face should have been.  Greedily he feasted upon Armand’s bleeding psyche, curling over his breast like a predator.  The frigid stone slid down over Armand’s tear-streaked visage.  He recoiled from the heaviness of the mask as it clung to his flesh, hissed in pain as it melded in place.

Ashekoroth drew a second mask from the darkness of his black shroud.  Though Armand had never seen it before, he knew it for the one the demon had shaped over his face.  It was of delicately molded leather with long strands of Armand’s golden hair framing its painted visage.  As Ashekoroth donned the mask, it fused and grew pliant until Armand saw his own face staring back at him.

“No!” Brigit cried, her voice harsh with terror, “Fight him, Armie!  Don’t let him win.  I’m dead either way.  You know that!”

“Come and get me, you miserable piece of s***,” Armand roared, a battle cry amid the welter of his violently bleeding psyche.  He could not last much longer.  The part of him that was Armand would go free and Ashekoroth would gain nothing but another rotting corpse.

Armand drifted up out of his bound body until he was nestled in Ashekoroth’s towering form.  He was now the vital spark of life that would seal the demon forever upon this plane.  Bent to his task, Ashekoroth did not notice Armand had taken control of his left hand.  How laughably easy it was to draw Ashekoroth’s attention with his madness. Armand quietly lifted away the jade mask and hurled it with demonic strength at the blood stained flagstones. 

A violent explosion of light and released magic shattered the air, hurling Ashekoroth’s screaming form back against the flimsy wall of the building.  Wood splintered beneath his back as shards of jade flew skyward.  A column of livid chaos crackled and arced over Ashekoroth’s dire form drawing curses and screams of misery from the demon’s stolen throat.

“Fool!” Ashekoroth roared.  Armand fell away from him, tumbling through the void until he felt again the trembling flesh of his own sundered body.  Madness took him as the long abandoned nightmare of the past enfolded him.