Page 140 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
It crouched down, picking at its teeth as it considered me. Like it had just finished feasting on the bones scattered across the chamber.
A sharp click of his long dark taloned fingers and light flared in the chamber as torches bolted to the stone walls flickered into life. Harsh, white-grey demonic fire. Brutally cold, tearing at my skin like an icy wind. A warning from my very blood.
Run.
There was a skittering noise, and I looked up to see the shadow of dark fiends crawling across the remains of the ceiling for the cover of shadow, like rats fleeing a disturbed nest.
Too many. Too close. Impossible things that shouldn’t be. I panted, panic threatening to overwhelm me. Verr stone lined every inch of the space, reflecting demonic light. This was the sacrificial chamber.
The thing in Fairfax came closer, taunting as it clicked those nails, coated in a metallic sheen that made me recoil. Forsaken iron. Extra fang-like teeth tried to protrude from his jaw as he moved oddly, not familiar with the form. Bones snapped with the slightest movement.
‘The old ones told us to fear Kysillia’s blood, and yet I remain unimpressed,’ he mused, coming closer as I pulled at my restraints again. Nothing but agony rolled through me in response, making my back arch, throat too tight to scream.
‘How long we’ve sought such rich ancient blood,’ the creature leered, dropping into an animalistic crouch so its rotten breath washed over my face. ‘You may have noticed the damage the last one caused to my trap?’
I twisted, trying to kick it away from me, but the demon was faster. That clawed hand grabbed a fistful of my hair, wrenching my head back to expose my throat. I bit back a scream as the iron of its nails made contact with my scalp. Tears dripped down my cheeks, stinging my raw skin.
‘You gave your blood too freely, little troll.’ He bared his fanged teeth, watching me squirm and kick like a fish on a hook, gagging on my own urge to beg for it to stop. ‘No wonder the Mage King’s bastard wanted you so desperately. How you reek of him.’
The thing’s clawed hand dragged up the inside of my thigh, burning me as my back bowed, feet kicking helplessly, unable to get away.
Kyvor Mor, it hissed inside my head, making my heart plummet in my chest. Then those nails dug into the soft flesh of my thigh, puncturing to the bone, and the pain entered my blood.
An animalistic scream clawed up my throat. The pain at my scalp was nothing compared to that now pounding through myveins. The warmth of my blood running down my thigh … too much … too quickly. Panic consumed me but was soon forgotten as another wave of agony overwhelmed me, broken sobs mingling with my screaming.
The stone around my throat burned hot. Something changed in the air before that light grew blinding, shooting from the stone, right into the face of that creature.
It screeched as it was thrown back across the chamber. Its claws had torn free of my flesh as I panted for breath. Choking for air as I tied to roll, slipping in my own blood, bound hands clawing uselessly at the ground.
Then I heard the soft cracking. Not darkness forming. Something older. Like ice on a pond as the sun touched it. I tried to focus, to blink the pain from my vision as I saw a golden vein of metal beneath me, running through the dark earth.
A seal.
I was lying on a seal. The golden metal forged by the Kysillian Kings, magic to ensure such darkness never again broke free. I heard the crack. The drops of my blood as they touched that gold. Small cracks forming like spiderwebs. Dark tendrils of smoke seeping through the openings.
Awakening what slept beneath.
Run. That warning came again. Louder this time. I pulled brutally at my chains, weakness hindering me as I cried out.
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ the creature mocked from the dark where it had been cast, words slurred and petulant after attack. ‘Kysillians gave up their strength trying to break those chains long ago.’
There was a hissed scuttle to my right, and I turned to see a shape moving in the darkness. Low to the ground, humanoid with limbs that were too long for its body. The limbs bentunnaturally, covered in dark flesh that seemed to want to peel from its skeletal form. Its blind milky eyes were too large for its skull as it bared its sharp fangs, a hiss leaving its throat.
‘You’ve met the galmoth before.’ The creature in Fairfax hissed a laugh. ‘It enjoyed you very much.’
Galmoth. A fear demon. The thing from the ruins, that madness that almost had me. Those fey Emrys had found, why their hearts had given out. It had driven them mad with fear.
I twisted against my restraints, desperate. A muted scream left my lips from the pain in my wrists, the weakness in my leg as the seal continued to crack. More dark smoke reached to be free around me, the horrid stinging cold of it searing right to my bones.
The necklace thrummed against my chest in alarm. Demonic laughter rumbled through the room, the galmoth growling as I panted through the torment. I willed myself to be stronger.
Then the wishing stone light went out.
The demonic laugher died. Silence consumed everything for a bare moment. A familiar sensation brushed against my skin, stilling me as the tension in the air mutated into something far more deadly.
An ominous growl rumbled through the dark, from the fiends hiding there. I turned, despite the pain it caused. Heart-stopping hope made my breath short, pain forgotten as the shadows stretched out from the darkness.
The ground trembled, dirt and stones bouncing across its surface. A solitary dark figure stood in that stream of light from above, dark smoke curling around his form, mixed with an ethereal volatile light wrapping around his hands and arms.
