What villainess am I?

Chapter 9 - Priests and gifts

No one can foretell the consequences of your good intentions.

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My eyes shoot awake, and my body actively fails to sleep again, thankfully. The shadows of past sleep haunt my memory. I swallow deeply, looking at Alice; I breathe deeply and squeeze her arm quietly.

Around us is a group of hooded figures; Alice holds me close to her chest, and her deep, tired eyes show signs of unrest. She hums that vibrate through her body like a wave of heat emanating deep within.

Knights in silver and lapis lazuli stand guard behind the colorful-robed figures, eyes shimmering around us from beneath veils of gold and silver. Whispers in a language Alice nor I know, and worst yet, Father stands still between the muttering crowd with an enigmatic stance. Neither fear nor elation befalls his stock frame. The only way to tell he is alive is his breathing, a soft rise, a soft fall. Constant and easy.

My body shivers at the scrutiny of the living, eyes dig deep into my soul. Too much does it remind me of the chilling faces, my face lidless and hollow, its ineffable visage grafted into my mind like a maggot, worming and writhing in the back of conscious thought. I feel food clutch in my throat and scratch deep at my skin as I push the creature, the rotting thing, away from my immediate mind.

Alice shushes, squeezing me close, and the whispering stops. One of the silver-veiled figures moves closer, the eyes glowing behind the veil. Deep violet rings shimmer across the veil before it pulls away.

"It wakes." From the thing throat comes a guttural, almost liquid voice that slops and squelches in the ear like phlegm and mucus dislodged with every word, "The child wakes, High Priest; shall we begin? Our duties demand compliance with the law." The final syllable warbles with an ill, slime-like consistency. Its eyes shimmer with violet light behind a veil of silver in a cloak of navy blue, scrutinizing my every movement. It hunches over, moving close to Alice with a fluid step.

As the thing moves closer, I hear a snap, someone trying to get its attention. Alice looks away from the creatures, almost hypnotizing gait to see who made the noise; a woman of strange proportions has her hand outstretched. Her robes are grey and blend with her hair and veil, her arms are too long, and her body appears freakishly thin, her head overbearingly bulbous. The liquid creature turned without moving most of its body; I could tell it changed, but it seemed so strange as the light flickered across its almost pitch-black robe; it reminded me so much of the deep oceans without any creatures often seen in documentaries.

The woman's voice falls like a whisp, faint and haunting like a mist at night; it is uncomfortably cold against my ears, and I rest my head further into Alice's chest, "We are yet to determine if it is one of them," she hesitates as it thinks, gangly and ill-fitting hand touching the lower jaw elbows bending far too low, "the blessed children. High Priest, speak, yes? Your duties, have they been," she holds again, words seeming hard to find with how her strange head moves, "fulfilled according to the edicts?" "False, lies, he lies!" from the liquid thing, bubble words of ire, like a wave, it pulls forward to Father's face, "The eyes! Eyes, it sees wide and bright, like a star! The child is star and blessed; it must be yes!"

Father, for his part, had been quiet. His enigmatic frame gave nothing of his appearance or will his words are bright like the night and haunting as I find the visage of the skin-thing appear in memory, its hollow eyes and the screaming visages of the tormented assassins bring shivers across my spine as I remember the flesh-things words,

"Do you enjoy my blessing?"

The hiss, the slow and oh-so-filthy way it sticks in the mind, the crawling sensation of things that should not be beneath my skin rear like a serpent in my mind.