Azazel's Sacrifice

[Iridni Ren]

Suspiria stood on the promenade overlooking the bay, a cold, brisk wind blowing in from the wintry waters and brushing her immutable face. To the Aasimar, such weather felt only invigorating. She glanced beneath her at the strutting gendarmes and mincing fops below…so like sheep bedecked in useless finery. Why had the wolf delayed to hunt from such a fat and dull flock? Even their language was monotonous bleating to her ears.

Out of suffering…wisdom. Unsurprisingly, then, decadent pleasure produced a race of fools. Her long, red tongue slowly caressed the points of her pearly canines. The rich feast served at the ball was to Suspiria like eating a meal of whipped cream, whereas she hungered for rare meat. Thanks be to the Mockery, it would be in ample supply in the poorest quarter tonight when the sheep slept and the shepherds stayed away. The waifs were thin and stringy, but the small portions on their fragile bones would taste like veal.

This was a vacation, rather than a jail sentence. To be sure, she had to be subservient to the insipid Anaralia, but—compared with the months of allowing the hated Og-Nedi to use her body for his depraved pleasure and her pain while she lulled him into complacency—what was a little furniture dusting? Her time of scarring and serial rape had been open-ended; her time of bowing and scraping to the doltish inferior had only three more weeks to endure.

The Maitresse, on the other hand, had proved a gentle taskmistress. Suspiria might even be able to help mend the breach between the Jalaberts and Baroness Lamont. What a feather in her cap that would be! She ached for Borca as though the land was an absent and once-satisfying lover.

In the meantime, she could also watch and learn. After all, no one had ever taught her the first thing about running a theatre, and she had picked it all up by trial and error—and instinct. She was a natural actress, or she would never have survived this long. Now, she would see how the professionals did it. Once back at the Broken Bell, she would combine the best of the primitive with the sophisticated to meld an art surpassing any in the Dread Realms.

Until one dark night, no one would ever again challenge her right to give herself any title she pleased.

[Iridni Ren]

Her spear caught the scout in the gut, and he was dead before he could even see who had struck him. She quickly closed the door so that the others would not be alerted to her presence.

She peeled back the man's clothing to reveal his bleeding entrails, her sensuous mouth beginning to salivate. Then she set to work with her hands and teeth, rending and chewing, trying to feed as quietly as she could, resisting her ecstasy at the warm blood and flesh filling her after so long a fast.

When sated, she stood up and opened the door. Perhaps as many as 16 thugs camped in the larger chamber, and several rushed her gory spectacle when they saw her, their anger overcoming their natural revulsion. This work would not be so quiet.

"Damn you, târfa iadului!...What have you done with Harkus?"

Useless arrows bounced off her hide, and the cave echoed with male screams as she whirled and stabbed, none of them so much as touching the beautiful, statuesque form she had renewed and strengthened through human sacrifice. The archers, standing behind their protective traps, panicked as she walked unharmed across their defenses, killing each before he could even put down his bow and draw a sword.

With her newly found might she was able to hoist their leader aloft on the point of her weapon, leaving him flailing helplessly as the life gurgled from him. She slammed him to the ground then and proceeded to decapitate his anguished head from his ruined body.

Looking around at the carnage, her only thought was, All this meat gone to waste.

So the Maitresse was dead. As decently as Verinne Van Haute had treated the Aasimar during the latter's servitude, she was ambivalent upon hearing the news. She did not have to worry, now, about recriminations if she failed to act on the assurances she had provided the noblewoman. In any case, she suspected Anaralia was somehow involved in the impressaria's assassination, so that the traitorous Fey could seize control of the Cellar. If Joseph did not watch himself, Anaralia would likely do away with him as well. Chantalyn had to admire the treachery of the sorceress, although killing her benefactor left her much more vulnerable. From the little Chantalyn had observed of Port-a-Lucine, having nobility on one's side trumped almost all else.

These matters were in her mind as she washed herself in a frigid cave stream, the murky cold as comfortable to her as a warm bath. Although blood was so common a sight in Barovia as hardly to be remarked on, Chantalyn did have appearances to keep up as a respectable manager of a theatre. She had some new clothes she wanted to wear and was looking forward to the perfume a certain handsome gentleman had promised her. Washing off death's fragrance was not always easy, nor was its smell entirely pleasing to her.

Now and again it brought back early memories of her father and mother.

All My Stars Aligned

[Iridni Ren]

The dissatisfaction gnawing at Suspiria was more than a lack of sustenance at the Aasimar’s not having fed in a wintry fortnight. In the frigid dusk of the Gray City she regretted ever feasting on human flesh and promised herself once more she would desist from this mortally dangerous dining Julian had taught her. How she yearned to enjoy wholesome food …but the longer she delayed giving into her appetite, the more heavenly pleasure her entire body experienced once she felt warm blood cascading down her throat, filling the hungry vacancy within her abdomen, as vulnerable flesh yielded to her beautiful teeth and dissolved in the lubrication of her saliva.

With each swallow of the precious nourishment, she knew what a god must feel—and a taste of the power that was rightfully hers. Not only the dark energy that pumped into her long limbs and torso, but the power of life and death over others: she was not born and bred to serve but to rule. The weak lived so that the strong might devour them.

And that truth was the source of her angst. How was it she must still skulk about and hide her true self from this impotent world—a world of fearful fools who judged what she did as wrong, when every lesson she had ever learned taught her the sublime morality of her course? As a child, she had been pure and good, only to see her virtuous parents slaughtered and to suffer more than a decade of unrelieved torture and abuse.

Violent murder had freed her, violent murder brought her material security, and now violent murder would abate her painful hunger.

Those who believed in the superiority of the Good were pampered and deluded children, sheep waiting to be gutted, quartered, and fed to the ravenous. Power came from the will to do all that was necessary to attain it.

Her might strengthened apace, as her enemies failed and her allies grew more numerous. Even so, she was impatient and wanted more. She yet dreamed that Baroness Armont would take her again to Borca, where her star would rise to a more prestigious firmament than backwards Barovia. Suspiria was not, however, one to sit idly by and wait for dreams to come true. Or willing to rely on the mercurial whims of others.

As much as she grasped now—more security and wealth than most Barovians could ever hope to achieve—the prize tasted in her mouth as bland as any cuisine not made of human flesh. Let the mediocre be content by a comfortable hearth with friends and kinship. Her superior spirit would always be restless and driven by infinite ambition…this consuming, hellish fire to repay the gods of Light for what they had allowed to happen to her.