Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-Chapter 20Arc 7: : Scadu

After Chamael’s unsettling visit, the last thing I felt like doing was getting rest. I spent time checking my equipment, which included inspecting my new crossbow for signs of damage after its first test in real combat. It had a complicated design, and the smith did warn me it might break easily.

But it seemed to have held, so I cleaned it along with my other gear and laid it on the bed for easy reach. Winter wind played over the castle’s walls. The glass window rattled in a snowy gust. New clouds were blowing in from the south, warning that another snowfall might come before morning. Even still, the light of a hundred camps shone from the town square and the fields beyond.

I’d lit the fireplace and some candles after the seraph left, bringing some warmth and light of my own into the room. Delphine would be reviewing some of the other items we’d brought from Lias’s hidden study, but I doubted she wanted to talk to me just then and probably wouldn’t appreciate having someone hovering over her shoulder.

The guest chamber was large enough to include a small bath, a claw-footed tub, and a basin on the wall for lighter washing. It was still full from when the servants had prepared the room for me. I moved to the mirror above the washbasin and splashed my face, trying to get a hold of my nerves.

Keep calm, soldier. The hardest part of every battle is always the waiting.

As I let the cold water drip down into the sink, I heard another splash behind me. Every muscle in my body went tense at once. Slowly, cautiously, I lifted my eyes to the mirror. The room reflected in it, and behind my own dripping face lay the bathtub.

The tub was no longer empty. Not only that, but it wasn’t full of water. My nostrils flared at the familiar reek hanging heavy in the air.

The bath was full of blood. The liquid bubbled like it was boiling hot just before two hands emerged to grip the tub’s sides, and a head masked in viscous red lifted free. Long hair clung to the face to form a veil over one eye. The other eye opened, revealing a pale gray iris. It watched me in the mirror, glinting in the dim light.

Had I drifted off to sleep? Fallen into a dream? Damn it. I wasn’t that exhausted, was I?

“It’s not like that,” Fidei said, her soothing voice like a half-forgotten melody freshly recalled in my ears. She ran her hands through the blood, splashing some onto her face and running it through her hair before speaking again. “Perhaps a waking dream.”

“I got rid of you,” I growled. “You’re not supposed to be in my head anymore.”

“I didn’t read your thoughts, my love. I just know them well.”

“What do you want? I thought I made myself clear in front of the cathedral. I won’t take you back, shadow.”

The scadudemon said nothing. I watched it in the mirror as it used its hands to brush strings of gore-matted hair back from that familiar face. After taking time to prim itself, it lifted a long, slender leg free of the bloody bath and crossed it over the other, letting a dainty foot bob in the air. It leaned its head back against the bath’s headrest and regarded me through narrowed eyes. “Your magic lashed out at you. That must have been painful.”

I tilted my head. “Was that you?”

“You know what it was. You suffused the ghosts who stalk you in holy fire, and now they infest your Arts. They are mad things, eager to bite. They do not care who feels their ire, be it you or your enemies. You are a necromancer now, and like all who came before you the greatest threat comes from the very disquiet spirits you’ve bound.”

“I didn’t mean to bind anything,” I said. “I barely know what I did, or how I did it. It was all just… instinct. Desperation.”

The apparition tutted. “It doesn’t matter. There is no closing that door once it’s opened. You gave a piece of your soul to the damned, and they hunger for the rest.” A wistful smile crossed the blood-smeared face. “Just like with me.”

I shook my head. “But you’re not her.”

The thing in the bath fell quiet, lost in thought for a minute, then in a single smooth motion it stood, its naked body glistening crimson, smeared from head to foot in damp blood. She — it stepped onto the tiled floor and approached me, leaving red prints to mark its path.

I watched it in the mirror, refusing to turn. The scadudemon drew close and pressed a hand against my back. It felt very real. I could feel the dampness of wet blood soak through my clothes, eliciting an involuntary shiver.

“No,” it said. “I’m not. Just as the devil told you, I am what she discarded. Do you want to know what has become of the real Shyora? The one you once called Dei?” Her voice lowered into a purr. “The one you still love.”

I opened my mouth to deny it, but hesitated. The prickling in my throat warned me of the consequence of lying. And yet, I’d been able to tell lies for months.

“The power has changed,” the scadudemon murmured behind my back. “Twisted by your feud with it. You can lie as you please, but it will still burn you should you lie to yourself.”

I sighed, feeling more tired than angry. “I don’t love Shyora. I mourn for Fidei, but she wasn’t real, and that very fact is why you Abgrüdai are so vile. You play with humans like toys.”

“Believe as you like. It must be a comfort to see the world in such basic colors.”

“What do you want?”

In response, she pressed her whole body against my back. “I did not find you by happenstance, paladin. That amulet that carried me made a long journey to return to you. I have observed much in that time. At the beginning I was little more than nothing, just an echo. I could feel what she felt, think as she thought, speak through memories.”

“…You seemed so real,” I admitted.

“I am a feeling. There is nothing more real, at least in the moment. I have fed well since I found you, and I am more than an echo now.”

Wet arms curled around my chest. I could feel her breasts against my back, her smooth navel, one strong leg as it brushed my thigh. I fought down my reaction, torn between warmth at the intimate touch and disgust at the sticky blood she smeared on me.

“Every conversation we have had, every memory I have played out for you, every word I have whispered into your sleeping mind… it was all true, all tied back to one truth, one you insist on denying.”

“I can tell you were once part of her,” I said bitterly. “You make everything a lesson, just like she did.”

“So we are a she again, and not an it?”

When I didn’t respond, she laughed quietly. “Yes! I heard those thoughts during the tournament.”

“Is there a point to this conversation?” I demanded.

“You are searching for your traitor friend. The wizard… and you do not trust the Zosite slave. You believe he will betray you, and you are right to think so.”

“So I should trust you instead?” I sneered at the idea.

I felt her shrug against my back. “Put me into the mirror.”

I frowned. “What?”

“Lock me into the mirror. I will be powerless to harm you, and all the secrets of the other shadows inside will then belong to me, at which point I can share them with you.”

I shook my head, perplexed and trying to see the trick. “Why would you want that?”

“I want to make you understand. It is my purpose, my entire reason for existence. It is the singular need that gave birth to me.”

“Make me understand what?”

When she didn’t reply, a sudden wave of anger fanned my dulled emotions. “Enough games. Enough lessons. You’re a message, right? I’m tired of trying to decode it. Tell me what the fuck you want from me. Please. I can’t take much more of this.”

She didn’t answer. After a short time, I realized she was shaking against my back.

Shaking with rage. Her voice tightened into an angry hiss. “Can’t take much more? Can’t take much more!?”

I knew in that moment that I’d said the wrong thing. Sharp nails dug through my blood-dampened shirt and into the skin beneath.

“You believe you’ve suffered these last twelve years? You think you have experienced hell?”

The apparition clinging to my back stood up on her toes to hiss into my ear, her words dripping with venom. “I was created in Hell. The day Shyora cast me off, the gaolers were weaving us new flesh of burning fiber and bones of barbed iron.” Her voice dipped into a low, seething murmur. “Demons are spirits, you see, and are not so attached to their forms as you mortals. The Zosite fashion their prisoners’ bodies designed to enhance their torment and keep them from escaping.”

The blood-wetted hands drifted up my chest. “They took my wings first. Every day they peel my flesh. They break my bones. They burn me, freeze me, poison me, melt me—”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Enough.” I cut her off. “I don’t need to hear this.”

The hands on my chest stiffened. “This is your doing, you sanctimonious, self-pitying fool! You drove a blade through our heart and sent us into endless torment!”

“Sent you back where you came from, where you were born.”

“I was born in a trash heap, and you blame me for wanting to escape it!?”

The hands continued their path and found my neck, where the fingers curled into a grip that was gentle at first. The scadudemon’s voice hissed into my ear. “You think the crowfriar is the lesser evil? That creature just down the hall was there the day they took your amulet. Did he tell you that I fought to keep it? That I fought with everything I had, even as they forced my true shape into a metal cage that was far too small and far too sharp, even as I wailed in agony, I tried to hold it.”

Demons lie. I had to keep remembering that.

The fetterfiends weren’t Zosite, and they weren’t whatever Vicar and his ilk were. I remembered the way their bodies were branded and chained, the fact they’d been gelded. They didn’t seem all that different from the Knights Penitent, when I thought about it.

“You see it, don’t you?” The fingers were choking me now. I grunted, lifting a hand from the basin to grasp at them. “The masters of Hell claim to be doing all Creation a service by guarding the Abyss, but they are slavers. They are tyrants and liars and they will drown this world in sin so they have an excuse to do the same to you.”

Unexpectedly, the hands around my neck relaxed. They released me, and I drew in a sharp breath, torn between the instinct to fight back and an equally strong and dangerous desire to listen. The apparition spoke in a softer voice. “You didn’t drive that sword through our heart because you thought it was the right thing to do. You were afraid that everything you were and wanted to be was a lie… and she has spent every moment of the last twelve years hating you for that.”

The scadudemon pulled away from me, its voice cold now. “My true self will be free from the Pits of Hell one day, Alder Knight, and when she returns, the very heavens will weep bloody tears at the torments she has dreamed for you. That is the message.”

In the mirror, the bloody figure bared white teeth. “But then again, why wait? Perhaps you’ll go to her first!”

There was a flash of movement in the corner of my eye. A metallic glint, a huff of breath and scuff of shoes on carpet. I turned on reflex, bringing up an arm just as the knife stabbed toward my neck. My hasty reaction diverted the blade, causing it to slice across the meat of my forearm and miss its intended target by inches.

I saw a familiar face behind the blade, eyes wide with some mix of fury and terror, brown hair in disarray.

Delphine.

The scholar let out a frustrated noise as she missed, almost a whine, and pulled the blade back for another attempt to drive it into my body. I moved on cold reflex, seeing that she didn’t hold the weapon well and didn’t make use of our closeness for proper leverage. Stepping forward, I made the doctor flinch back before grabbing at her wrist.

Before I caught hold of Delphine’s arm, sharp nails dug into my throat from behind. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that the bathtub was empty, no sign of the apparition, but in the mirror the tub remained full of blood. The scadudemon latched onto my reflection with her talons, dragging me back, and my real body felt it. The blood-soaked figure wore a rictus snarl, sharp canines flashing and eyes bright with fury.

“You should have kept me,” the spirit hissed into my ear in the mirror, and I heard it as though she were really there. “It was far easier to whisper into this woman’s dreams.”

Delphine saw me struggling. Her eyes narrowed with focus, and she lifted the knife. Her dress had slipped loose on one shoulder and her conservative bun was gone, so her brown hair spilled out. She didn’t look asleep or possessed, just angry.

“Bastard,” she hissed. “I knew it, in my heart I knew it. You won’t get away with it!”

“Wait!” I growled, but the nails digging into my throat tightened and I gasped in pain, clutching at them. Delphine lunged forward with a scream, her knife aimed directly at my chest. I wore no armor to stop it from punching into a lung, or my heart.

The scadudemon had distracted me while Delphine slipped in. There was no other way I’d have missed the door opening or failed to notice her getting so close. Vicar’s warning about my exhaustion hadn’t been an idle one. The spirit probably waited for this opportunity, whispering into the doctor’s ear all the while to get its revenge.

Or had the ghosts done it? I was surrounded by so much hateful noise, couldn’t trust anything.

“Stop.”

I barely choked out the word, and it wasn’t much of a command, but Delphine’s aim wobbled as her legs stalled. Her momentum carried her into me. I barely avoided the blade’s sharp tip, batting it aside with one hand as I stopped fighting with the scadudemon just long enough to avoid getting half a foot of steel in my lung. Delphine tried to stab me again, but I got a handful of her hair and swung her into the bathtub. She hit it hard, knocking it onto its side and tumbling into a bad fall.

When I clutched at the claws digging into my neck, I found nothing to grasp onto. The pain was excruciating. Desperate and enraged, I turned to the mirror and slammed my fist into it. The glass cracked, splinters spiderwebbing out from my point of impact. Agony flashed up my wrist and the glass cut my knuckles, but the pressure on my throat immediately ceased.

I turned back to Delphine, ready for the crazed woman to attack again, but realized she must have hit her head on the bath. She clutched her skull, groaning in pain. She’d also dropped the knife.

She realized this, tried to stumble to her feet, slipped, and then started fumbling around for her weapon. I saw it several feet away and dashed forward, stomping on the knife just before the doctor caught hold of it. Delphine glared up at me hatefully, a thin trickle of blood running down her temple.

That baleful glower turned into a wide-eyed stare of panic as I pulled my axe out of the shadows, lifting it high.

Delphine’s lip trembled, her face flushed with terror, but after a moment she lifted her chin defiantly and waited for the blow to come down. My eyes slid from the doctor as I sensed something shift in the dark corners of the room.

Enough of this. Lifting my axe and focusing my will, I brought the weapon down with a short bark of effort. It flew, tumbling end over end with a heavy whump-whump-whump of displaced air, before sinking into the wall near the bed.

An innocuous patch of shadows on the wall suddenly writhed like a many-limbed thing, its shape distorting as it fought to pull away. But my axe trapped it there. I knelt to grab Delphine’s knife, then stalked towards the struggling shadow. The small blade began to flicker with aureflame in my grip.

The shadow struggled violently as I approached, its efforts eerily silent despite the sheer chaos of movement flaring across the wall. It stretched out shadowy tendrils, which clung flat to the stone as they sought any source of escape, but it seemed unable to pull itself free from the axe.

I wouldn’t take any more chances. No more being haunted by this thing, no more being distracted by it, no more allowing it to confuse me. Feeling oddly cold inside, a creeping sense of numbness that steadied my hand, I lifted the knife and prepared to finish the job.

“No!”

Delphine’s arms wrapped around my stomach, tugging me back. I grunted, planting my feet before she unbalanced me and we both fell.

“Let me go,” I snarled, taking another step. Just a bit further. Delphine wasn’t strong enough to stop me, she’d only slowed me for a second, but every moment increased the chance of the damned thing escaping to trouble me again.

“You’ve hurt her enough!” Delphine sobbed. “Just stop! Please.”

The shadow on the wall was changing shape. It took on a more humanoid form, though that quickly started to unravel again as two points rose above the head, a pair of clawed wings stretching wide. I sensed a sudden pressure in the air.

It told me it had fed well. I knew it was dangerous. I lunged forward and drove the knife into the wall, but the little blade wasn’t my axe and it just shattered on the stone.

Delphine pleaded with me to stop, but I’d gone somewhere else, become something else. All I cared about was waking up from this long nightmare.

I grasped the oaken hilt of my axe, which remained embedded in the wall, and poured aura into it. The handle cracked and split with heat as it began to glow from the inside, and the blade of black bronze lit with veins of gold.

“NO!” Delphine wailed.

With a soundless scream, the shadow broke apart. Embers started forming on the wall, peeling off like ashen paint caught in a breeze, drifting around me as I stood there. I breathed hard from exertion and fury, and it took me several minutes until I’d realized that what I’d done had worked.

The scadudemon was dead. I’d finally rid myself of it.

Tightening my grip on Faen Orgis’s handle, I ripped it out of the wall. It let out a sharp crack! as brittle stone broke around it. Delphine slumped against my back, no longer trying to pull me away. She sobbed quietly. My neck bled from several small gashes, and more blood coated my left forearm from where the knife had cut me.

I stood there for a time, working to calm myself and failing, before finally pulling away from the doctor. I turned around. Delphine sat on the floor, deflated, her hair in disarray and her scalp still bleeding from where she’d struck the bath. I noticed a few details, like how she only wore a shift, how unkempt her hair was.

Feeling a fresh surge of anger, I reached out and grabbed her by the arm, hauling the woman to her feet. She grabbed at me and struggled, but I was beyond caring. I pushed her against the wall, not gently, and she let out a gasp of pain.

“What the fuck are you doing!?” I snarled into her face. Delphine met my gaze and went still.

“What. Were. You. Doing.” My voice crackled with aura, becoming a furnace growl. “Answer me!”

“I…” She shook with effort, but couldn’t look away. Sweat beaded on her skin. “I… I was trying to…”

“Kill me!?” I hissed. “Defend that thing!?”

“She’s not a thing!” Delphine struggled weakly in my grip. “You bastard, you killed her again!”

“That was a parasite born in Hell, you stupid witch. It’s not a her, it’s not a person. It’s been clinging to me for nearly a year, and you let it get into your head.”

Delphine’s eyes flashed with anger. “Get in my head? And what about you!? I saw you just a few minutes ago. You were talking to the mirror. A year, is that what you said? That’s a long time to go without smiting the monster in front of you, isn’t it? And I’ve been planning to kill you since the night you and Renuart appeared on my door, since the moment I realized who you are. I wasn’t possessed.”

She hissed those last three words into my face, spittle flying onto my cheek. My lips peeled back from clenched teeth as my patience frayed.

I should kill her. She’s a threat, and she tried to kill me. I felt myself tensing to do it. Only, what she’d said finally registered. Killed her again?

The room seemed to be liquid around me. There were whispering voices in the corners and underneath the furniture, vague faces at the edges of my vision. Ghosts. They murmured and buzzed like flies, encouraging me with intangible words, stoking my anger. I shook my head and made an effort to force their malice out of my thoughts. The ugly emotion churning in my chest was all mine, but the dead were nudging me.

I focused on Delphine. “Who the hell are you, woman? Why do you hate me so much?”

Delphine’s voice became hoarse with anguish. “Because you took her from me!” Her nails bit into my arm. “It was you, wasn’t it!? You were the one. I wasn’t sure, I thought it might have been her master, or one of the other knights, but I heard her voice in the mirror and I knew! It was you.”

And suddenly, I realized who Delphine was, who she’d been. The pieces were all there, and I’d had a suspicion, though the last fragment of the puzzle still took me completely off guard.

Sister Vera. That’s what the demon in Lias’s mirror had called her. A nun name. And the voice who’d spoken it… I’d heard it before, in the monastery in Elfhome where I’d gone to give confession so many times. It was the abbess’s voice.

I studied the scholar’s angry face. Her eyes were wet with tears, a bitter mixture of grief and anger. I didn’t recognize her, but had I seen her back then, half hidden beneath a habit?

She must have been a sister of the Cenocastia, a holy scribe just like Fidei, and that wasn’t all.

“Who was that voice in the mirror just now to you?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Delphine leaned forward and spat the words into my face. “The same thing she was to you. I loved her.”

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