Chapter Three

Necromancers’ Plaything

I was a curious girl. I delved into things better left alone and paid the price. The evils released into me are released into the world by those who seek unnatural power. I seek to stop those like the two I hunt. I trail them by the smell of blood they leave. I seek out others who would do likewise, and I dispatch the things that hide in shadow. For me there is despair and all manner of evils. For those few hurt by magick’s touch those few innocent I can save there is Hope.

From the Journal of Heather Stevens.

Months had past since Heather became prisoner to the twisted wizards Monet and Lorenzo. Since she had come to know them in January, she had been betrayed shortly after. She marked the month as either March or April.

The iron cuffs bit hard into Heather’s wrists as her knees balked at supporting even miniscule burden of her fragile frame. Thin to begin with, there was almost nothing left of the girl after countless weeks of starvation and torture. The chains hung from a pulley in the ceiling, and she could not kneel even halfway to the ground as they forced her shoulders upward twisting them to the breaking point behind her back. She tried forcing herself on tiptoe to give her arms back a bit of the slack her knees had surrendered, but found no relief.

Heather’s pale legs were coated in rivulets of dried blood and filth. Her naked skin was crisscrossed with shallow slashes of a razor. She could feel each mark of the chaotic pattern when the draft of the cellar stirred the air. Those fine golden body hairs not matted down caught the slightest breeze and sent a fire-like shiver of blue pain through her.

The air of the room was barely chill even though it was early spring. She suspected that this room adjoined the furnace room because the outside should be cold enough for her to freeze. Since her captors spent a lot of time down here, she knew the warmth was for their convenience and not her own.

For their own sadistic pleasure, Lorenzo had held her chains tight while Monet had plunged a red hot iron into each of her eyes. The woman Heather had once loved laughed at her. “There dear, now you won’t have to see the horrible things we are going to do to you.” Heather was heartsick at ever trusting this witch.

The room that held her for so long had no comforts for her. In the days before her captors blinded her on a whim, she had looked on the room that had been largely empty, but was filled in one corner with a huge plain wooden table and cabinets of glassware and apothecary vials. When her captors came, she could hear them rattling the glassware as they made their sinister preparations or when they gave her what little food and water she needed to live. Vile smells of burnt flesh and rancid herbs accompanied both food and potions. She was forced to drink the awful concoctions although much ended up running down her chest leaving a slimy residue. The stuff sustained her. Why wouldn’t they just let her die?

She was stuck near the back wall where a single window —-up high-- held her in its distinct warmth during the day. That ray of light was her means of telling time from the beginning. After she lost her eyes, the unseen shaft warmed her in the day and let her tell night from day, but now she had a fever and she shook all the time. She had lost track of how long she’d been captive. Pain, cold, tinkling of glass, and clinking of chain were all she knew now.

While her fever raged she hallucinated. Horrid things assailed her in her mind’s eye. At times, she imagined a thousand beetles made of razor blades beset her. Other times it seemed she was consumed by endless flame. Sometimes she was spirited away to a horrible place where she was chased by unseen things through a grey and misty swamp with stinking muck that sucked at her feet.  Still she wished this fetid dungeon was the nightmare and those gruesome visions were reality, but she always awoke to this horrid room trapped in her pain wracked body. For her, there was neither escape nor hope.

Her mind hid, crouched in the very back of her skull, and cowered there during those awful initial sessions. They tortured her often. She learned the torture came with or without her willing answers to meaningless questions. After they cut out her tongue, the pain came without pretense. She was a play toy of sadists.

Then, the project began. Heather could not see the hand that held the blade, but she knew the touch. A razor sharp blade was used to painfully slice a design in her skin. Short straight strokes formed bloody letters while long burning ones added filigree and accent. The razor just broke the surface of the skin enough that blood would begin to pour. The cuts weren’t deep, but the strokes stung.

The girl was filled with confusion. The pattern was begun at her left foot, and each day the woman—how she knew the touch!— would add to it. It grew to cover her body until there was only a single patch of skin left. She would have wondered what was next, but by this time she was beyond caring. She merely endured.

Now, she could hear her kidnappers’ footsteps against the stone floor as they came down the hall to the room. First, she heard the clicking of high heeled boots. The woman, her tormentor and master, glided down the hall to the dungeon. Next, there came the softer sounds of shuffling feet of the brother, who was her assistant, note taker, and constant companion. During her stay, Heather found out that the woman and her brother were unnaturally close and affectionate for family. She heard a faint rustling of the man’s cape and robe as they dragged over the stone flooring. The girl remembered the awful woman wore only tight, revealing clothing when she bothered to wear clothing at all; Monet preferred to operate ungarbed.  

Though Heather was blind, she could feel the woman’s dark eyes scanning her battered form—the project scored into her flesh. The woman mentally caressed each section of the design. Heather could almost feel the heat of woman’s gaze appraise each scar and mark lovingly as with ken of an artist as well as critically with the eye of a scientist. The girl heard the woman make a clicking sound with her tongue as she evaluated her work. The girl was this artist’s canvas and prized piece. However, the girl’s instinct told her the woman was also gazing appreciatively at the bruises, burns, contusions, and other marks left on the girl’s body from her struggles—from the time when she could struggle.

Heather Stevens remembered the woman’s eyes. They were a deep sea green, intense and feral, with edges that faded black. They were the eyes of a predator. The brother’s eyes were the same, but held a passive quality or a patina of boredom. His eyes had looked sleepy like those of some great lion king stretched out in the savannah sun.

The brother and sister often exchanged words the girl was unsure of. Much of the time, they spoke to each other in some Italian dialect. Though Heather was a natural with languages, she only understood a little Italian-- mostly via French or Latin. At times, the diabolical pair also tossed around a lot of Latin, but the speech seemed to be heavily embellished metaphors or elaborate and obfuscated invocations. The girl only truly understood those things they said to each other when one would use some English or French by accident or necessity.

This time, they argued with each other and the woman sounded very emphatic and her brother sounded annoyed. Heather did not like the sound of any of it, but she was too helpless in her current state to do a thing about it.

The brother, she guessed from the strength of the pull, hoisted the chain to force her into a standing position while the woman clinked during her preparations at the table.  The girl’s arms were almost torn from her shoulders as her body was lifted slightly off the ground. A popping noise that accompanied the great pain was cartilage and sinew giving in to hellish torque. Her shoulders had been forced from their sockets.

“Voila, ma petite. We are almost finished here.”

The girl could hear the superiority the woman felt seep into her voice as she affected her perfect French accent. The lady’s cold tone suggested to Heather she might as well have been addressing an empty room and not her favorite captive.

A slightly muffled sound came from the woman’s direction, and suddenly, the girl felt the coolness of soft, chill palm on her thigh. She recoiled from the woman’s cold touch, intimate against her fevered body, as those hands caressed the previous days’ scars. When the woman came to the more recent scabs and festering wounds, the girl felt her fingers linger as she traced them closely. A hot breath poured over the inflamed flesh.

“Oui, ma chère, it is almost over, so we begin the ending. After this, you will be all better. Believe me. You will be much, much better.”

A sharp blade bit into the last unscarred place of Heather’s torso, and warm blood began to run down her ribs. Several quick slashes were followed by the prolonged burning of a long cut. Next, the woman would apply some sort of stinging tincture to the raw, open flesh; it burned like battery acid. Later, the finished wounds were rubbed with a sooty powder.

This session, like all the others, lasted hours as the intricate design was added to. Pain heaped upon pain.  Fortunately, Heather now passed out easily in her frail state.

Days passed as wounds scabbed and became scars. The girl was left chained to the wall to heal. During this time, her captors would enter her cell briefly to check on her, but otherwise she was left in peace.

One day, Heather woke up and slowly realized she was facing the ceiling. She was lying naked on the wooden table while held spread eagle by four-point restraints. As she raised her head, she heard the woman standing before her chanting something unintelligible but fervent.

Suddenly, in her mind’s eye, she perceived a cyclone of energy filling the chamber in front of her. Within its wicked greenness, swirled ancient letters and symbols not meant to be comprehended. By some other form of ken, she could see the glyphs in the spinning mess were the same as those carved in the pattern on her body. The woman’s chanting increased in tone and rhythm and the fierce spinning of the eldritch tornado increased in time with it.

Her bonds released with a ripping sound and she was lifted off the wooden slab to an upright position by an unknown force. She was floating vertically above the table.

Heather watched helplessly as the spectral enchantment, ordered forth by Death’s Sorceress, crept forward and suddenly coiled itself around her naked form. Each symbol of the swirling lexical cacophony emblazoned itself on the poor girl’s thin body as it rushed by to find its place-- whether it was carved in her breast, her thigh, or her foot—- and implanted itself. Each mark touched her skin with a pain that seared her soul and froze her mind. Numb. The awful spell was devouring her from the inside. Every word of the spell seemed to delete a part of her and rewrite itself in its place.

The girl’s back arched as the pain intensified. Her dumb mouth opened wide in a noiseless scream to release the fear and horror which she was enduring. It didn’t help. The particles of the etched spell fell into place more quickly. As the elements formed their blasphemy, a fresh agony of burning swirled along the curved lines that scarred her body. The feeling raced down her arms and her torso following the gory tracery that spiraled her. It whipped down her body like pinpricks and then turned to daggers. It circled between her legs sending her into terrible spasms as in twisted its way to her feet.

And, then it was over. Each mark had buried itself in her core, her soul, and vanished from the surface in the process. Her flesh was made whole and her body remade as fresh and new as if the past months had never happened. Her strength, as little as it was, was restored. The pain was gone. The pain was gone.

When the magickal maelstrom had dissipated, she was deposited back on the table. The hook and loop restraints closed again on her ankles and wrist.

With her sight restored, she saw the woman who had bound her, that beautiful face with the predatory eyes. She was kissing the man with a more than sisterly passion. His hand in turn groped Monet as if the magical rape of the girl had only whetted his lust.

“That went well,” The woman purred. “You feel better now? Good!”

“What…” Heather said carefully to make sure her voice worked.

“…have we done to you? An experiment. We have, ah, modified an old enchantment for our special purposes.” Monet’s laughter rang like crystal.

Lorenzo interjected in a baritone voice. “It’s an immortality spell. Similar to the ones that sustain us. It was, that is, until we revised it. Now, you will most certainly desire to live forever for dying will be quite….well, see for yourself.” He drew a broadsword from the ornate scabbard at his side.

The sadistic woman’s eyes glowed yellow. “Au revoire,” she said with a wicked smile.

The girl glimpsed a silver flash as Lorenzo chopped off her head. Her head bounced to the floor where it rolled around in a most undignified manner. All she could see from here were indistinct shadows cast on the wall by sconce lighting. One silhouette seemed to be moving and changing. She could hear a growling sound and the silhouette of a great cat appeared atop the table with her body. Though her head was now severed, she still felt every sensation as the feline beast began to feed on her body. The beast bit into her middle, tore away a section while feasting on her blood and bone. Every bite was agony.

The girl was aware for the entire devouring—- not able to see except for the shadow play on the wall, but still able to feel. The floor and walls were wet with her blood as the great cat shook her corpse and tore hunks of meat from it—- Or was it still her body?

When the beast left the table she could hear the man’s laughter ring out thru the halls. “Now, you will know suffering little one.”

That’s when she noticed another sensation— she was no longer connected to the remains on the table; it began as an itch or a tickle where her head had been severed but soon grew into the most horrible pain she’d ever known. Her body was rapidly regenerating from the neck down. Every nerve was raw and exposed. The flesh and bone grew a back magickly—- in the most painful ways possible.  Somewhere in this maddening crucible the girl lost her mind.

* * *

Heather could remember the feeling of being eaten. Even worse she could remember the pain as every raw nerve regenerated along with her flesh, bone, and blood. Both pains were foremost in her mind, and dwarfed any memory of the torture of the weeks before. But neither could compare to the betrayal she beheld in the terrible bright eyes of Monet, the woman she had loved, or had thought of as her lover. She realized that love had been just another form of abuse. Wave after wave of pain washed over her as she was submerged in a lake of fire and agony; her mind was filled with blackness.

She didn’t remember running headlong into the night from the mansion still naked as a newborn. She didn’t remember the scrapes from the thistles and thorns of the woodlands she careened through. Nor did she remember foaming at the mouth as she raved and howled in front of the old Abbey.

The monks covered her, took her in, and gave her into the care of the nuns. She was put in a cot in an empty cell, and tended by on old nun. In this state she was barely aware of her surroundings and couldn’t do much for herself.

She was lucky-- although they had taken her for a lunatic, they decided to care for her out of charity. In their hands she began to recover her senses.

A month passed before she could speak coherently or gestures calmed from wild flailing to more deliberate movements; it was only then she could begin to communicate her basic needs to her caretakers. Over time she improved further and she could see they were greatly relieved. When she regained her speech she proved to them she was quite an intelligent girl. When she was mobile, she often walked the grounds and spoke to the nuns and monks.

She was told the Abbot had started a search for her relatives, but had made little progress with the local authorities. He let her know he could probably help now that she could answer his questions.

The only trouble was she couldn’t remember much. So, more time passed.

One day, while she was sitting in the court yard under a ponderous limbed oak that sat behind the chapel, a monk came silently over to her. She didn’t notice him for a long while as she was deep in thought piecing her life back together. Her memories were like a painting on glass that had shattered. Many pieces, a kaleidoscope of colors, and empty spaces which didn’t belong-- all jumbled together in her head.

“Pardon, mademoiselle?” the monk asked

“Yes, brother?” she replied absently.

“Noctua, little owl of the night, I am known as Brother Justinian. I have heard what little of your tale you have been able to share, and I think I know what has happened to you. You have been maliciously enchanted. Evil necromancers have had their way with you and mistreated you horribly.”

“Yes…I think that fits with some of it. It’s so terrible I don’t want to remember and …magick… it all seems so unreal now.” She gave the monk a pain filled smile. She doubted another could understand her pain.

“No, child, it is very real. I can’t begin to describe the curse that sits upon you, but I can see it clearly. It is entwined within the core of your being and seems to bind you together and holds you to this world. I have only seen something like this once before. An ancient wizard once used a similar construct to prolong his own life through the ages. He disappeared but he passed the incantation onto his offspring and apprentices. Those who follow the path of “Death and Life in Death” still use the spell today, or so it seems.”

“Brother, is there anything I can do to stop their evil? I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. I have to stop them.” She remembered so much more than she let on. She had her own burden to bear.

“Well, I am a poor brother and a worse wizard, but I have in my cell some parts of the ancient Book of Light. Its spells have life giving properties and other usefulness. It was written in the days of Quintus the Younger, and each instruction is in ancient Latin.”

“I can handle Latin, Brother,” a doubtful look lingered on her face. “But, tell me, since when does evil overcome itself?” Heather laid her head in her hands looking morose. If it were just a matter of magick...she thought

“Bah, the Church holds much magick in itself. Magick is like a hammer...a tool for good or evil. But, evil always finds a way to make magick look awful.”

“So, I can fight them? Stop them?”

Brother Justinian shrugged, “By knowing these things you will be better off against them and you may come to undo some of the evils of the world. But, it won’t come easily.”

Heather considered his words and smiled, “Then, bring me the book.” She needed a toolkit— one with a big hammer.

***

It was the middle of May before the combined efforts of the Abbot and the police pieced together enough information to get her home. She had scared her family to death with her absence and decided it was better to spare them the details of her abduction.