Chapter 11: Crawl
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In the pit that was once the oligarchy’s ballroom, perhaps the room where Antigua fell, Theodora patiently followed the seemingly aimless migration of one of the pit's residents. She paced behind it like a lady in waiting. Slow moving as they were, she still felt safest behind one, sooner than have one appear behind her. Why not throw them in the sea?
Her hand fondled the dagger at her hip, tempted by curiosity to just stick this mound of undying flesh. She couldn’t know though, if under all those grotesque tumours there was something human left.
Not even the Paragon could guess why he collects them here, he does nothing with them. It was like some grotesque garden bed after rain overrun with snails, the way they crawled about. Except snails inspired the confidence they were aware of their immediate surroundings.
The one Theodora was pacing behind suddenly started making gagging retching noises. Please don’t void your bowels… the noises came from the front of the form. Theodora relaxed. Does anyone feed them? And what do they feed on? She looked ahead of her quarry, opposite it was another bloated tumorous sack. Are they attempting to talk?
‘Stupid aren’t they?’ a cheery and too-familiar voice rang out.
Theodora turned to take in the self-styled “Immaculate Consort of the Sentient Sun”, watching him descend a staircase with his overly mobile joints was quite disquieting, as was everything else about the man.
‘They were Stupid. I’m not sure they’re anything anymore.’
The Seer reached the ballroom floor, causing some agitation to a startled abomination. It didn’t phase him though, and he made a courteous bow in Theodora’s direction.
‘Sometimes I wonder if it would be kinder to toss them into the sea.’
‘Any reason you had me come to this...stable?’ Do not ask me to work with these things.
‘I thought I’d meet you halfway. As a gesture.’ Or disturb my concentration.
‘Halfway? by your strides or mine?’ The seer laughed as mechanically as his eye. Fuck you, you monster.
‘Ha. Ha. Ha. Very good Theodora. Those wits of yours.’
He was not a man Theodora could look in the eyes. He was a hated go between…though it seemed more likely that the Marquis had little to know idea what the Seer did on his behalf. With that fucking mechanical eye, she could not get the measure of him.
‘How can I be of service?’ It was time to expedite things.
‘I’m sure you serve in more ways than even I’m aware of Theodora.’
‘Don’t ask me to kill these things.’ The anticipation made her sick.
‘Oh no no no, a different whim brings us together.’
‘’Whim?’ he smiled at her, the fuckwad.
‘Know you how to cleanse the skin of markings?’ he said with a smile lacking all innocence.
‘Do you fucking jest?’
Below the palace were the basements. Below the basements were the ambiguously titled ‘cells’ whose form and function were best forgotten, out of use long before Antigua’s fall. Below the cells were the caves, which had been secured for Theodora’s coven - “The Coven of Seconds”.
What made the cave complex less-than-ideal at least made it secure. That security had allowed her coven to make the caves habitable, and with each day she spent in the Marquise’s good graces they improved their condition, while never quite being able to forget they lived under his foot.
Fuck.
She had thought herself done with them. Her most pressing concern now was keeping her coven thought of as redundant. But the reward for her successes was a commission she could not deliver.
‘Tears mother?’ Sophia greeted her as she entered her habitat.
‘No tears daughter.’ she made straight for her library, a cluster of notebooks all threaded through by needle on the back wall.
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