Chaos Precip

It was to be a special night. One of the sacrifice nights, where they all gathered in the caves and came together in order to celebrate the removal of one more demon from the world. Julie hadn't told L what was to happen, she simply fluttered around more cheerfully than usual. All those entering the caves had an air of celebration, of festivity. They trickled in from the surrounding town, the farms, smiling and chatting as though on their way to a party.

Tillden was in the cave above the womb room, standing at the alter and smiling benevolently at his congregation as they filtered in and took their places. Julie hustled L to a spot near the middle, patting his shoulder and arm repeatedly, "I told you that he would like you." she murmured, "You should be honoured, we do not add to the true congregation that often."

The Caves are lonely, dark and deep,
And I have sanity to keep,
And no matter what, I mustn't sleep,
No matter what, I mustn't sleep.

Never once, in any of his eighteen years, had L spent so much unbroken time underground.

Nothing much changed, in the caves, certainly nothing that could be observed in the short life of a human. The centuries that shaped the stones, the gradual dripping erosion of water on minerals... it was beyond all of their comprehension. The air was ever-stagnant, doing little to soothe the musty coughs that occasionally interrupted the stillness that came with night.

At least, they told him it was night. He couldn't know for sure. Wrapped in his affinity, he couldn't have been more in his element, but there weren't shadows without light to offset them, not truly. It was a complicated balance. One didn't rightly exist, without the other, and complete darkness filled him with an almost feverish giddiness. The balance was gone, the reference point was obliterated, there was no perspective, and it was dangerous. He occasionally woke to it, before the candles and lanterns had been lit, nearly drunk on how himself he felt.

The only thing that could have made it better was wind. Lightning. Crackling energy. L had always feared storms, but lately, something pulled at him, a part of him dearly hoped for one. Tension wished for release, and L was most certainly tense.

How could he not be, buried in the heart of a cult, dancing in the palm of a very charismatic man who shared his very same strengths and weaknesses?

He ate his meals, he attended his sermons, he made awkward small-talk with humans who were as ill as he was and blamed it all on the Olia. But mostly, L waited.

She didn't bother keeping track of how far she walked; once she split up with L's wagon, she simply...kept going. She stayed a day or two, earning her keep in a house or an inn, but she kept walking. Her feet toughened easily, quickly, and believably. Another adaptive perk of her race apparently, she was learning more all the time.

What mattered was that she walked through towns, telling her story in careful pieces until she came to a town she could feel L in. This was it then, the place to settle and start. He'd beaten her there by weeks, and that was perfect as far as the plan was concerned. Perfect as far as her current traveling companion went too. Apparently it was easy to find a native guide when one was short, blonde, and traveling alone. Just a trapper from 'around these parts' but he was happy to take her to town and give a good word to one of the ladies there so she could work for a place to sleep.

He may have also taken one aside and whispered about the woman looking for a good healer for a fertility problem. He was a good boy like that. She might have felt bad about lying to the man if there hadn't been bodies in this case, as it was, well, it was handy when the matron of the house clucked sadly and made sure Aya was settled comfortably.

Now there was nothing for it but to work hard, be sweet, if a bit bitter about a lost love, and...wait. The hooks were out and she could be patient as long as L didn't get hurt.

The two of them found it both difficult and far too easy to get involved in the fringes of the cult. For L, it was even easier than for Aya. His lack of health, his shy and retiring nature...

Her name was Julie. Julie Maddox. She was a widow of nearly forty years. Childless. Human. Her husband had also been human, and he'd died in a hunting accident. It wasn't the personalities that made her think of her husband, it was the black hair and bruised looking eyes. When she looked at L, she saw someone who might have, in another world, been her child. She saw L, she took him in. Julie wasn't a bad woman, she really wasn't. She went to church, she said her prayers, she was kind to children and her neighbours. She listened to the Word of the Great Mother and Her First Son and she waited for everything to be made right again. To Julie, it would be a sin to let a sweet boy like L try to make his way in the world without help! Especially here, in this place. Humans had to stick together.

So she set the table and smiled at him again, “So, child, tell me more what brought you here? Are you seeking something?”

Aya fanned herself with her sun bleached straw hat and bent down to adjust the strap on her shoes. Shoes; not boots. Ugh. And even better she was walking beside their shaded wagon instead of riding in it because the character she was assuming would have very well broken in shoes and callused feet. She felt almost naked out of her gear (the linen shirt and pants wouldn't stop claws after all) but at least it was relatively cool.

And even worse, in her mind, was that she'd initiated all these changes in wardrobe so she didn't have any right to complain.

She managed to amble up beside the heavily shaded driver's seat and blink wide, blue eyes up at her companion. At least she didn't need help looking like an innocent, small woman? That was all genetics and she usually went to pains to hide it. "We'd been trading in Wae'shan when he got the idea in his head that no Water was going to help me...and where he saw a woman from his last trip with a child.. His, not mine. Law is simple back in our home town, Tant, an infertile couple can annul a marriage just by saying so...an he did, at Spring Faire. Front of everybody no less." There was a flare of hurt and confusion as she told the tale, simple words conveying a lot more to any mind willing to fill in the details.

Yes, she'd been practicing. Almost non-stop in fact. After all, she'd need to be able to lie properly.

The act slid away as she peered up at L though, worry in her voice. "You barely ate earlier, L, and you don't look good now."

The town of Joppa had been nice, though admittedly it was a new route for her. Karren hadn't known there was much demand for laces and ribbons this far north, but then women were the same everywhere weren't they? Everyone liked a little something nice. Especially when the fair she'd been intending to go to in lower Kentucky had been cancelled. That had made her desperate enough to north toward cave country.

After all, a woman that lived by supplying fripperies couldn't afford a drop in custom if she wanted to keep eating! The folk were friendly though, and though there wasn't a fair they'd still cleaned her out of her lace, ribbons, even her embroidery. No little of it would be used to woo sweethearts if she was any judge of things. She'd never seen a town so full of people making moon eyes at each other! She chuckled to herself as her light wagon rolled down the road, shaking her head at the hoops youths jumped through just to land a mate or three.

Well, whatever the cause, it certainly sold goods!

She was in an altogether good mood as she drove through the forest edge, dappled noon sunlight slipping through the branches above brokenly...

...very brokenly...

...in fact the noon sun had decided to hide on her. She reined her tugger to a halt and looked up, annoyed. Of all the times for rain now was a bad one! Granted, she didn't have any goods to get soaked, but her threads would still get drenched, and not to mention herself. She'd wanted to get to the next town before anything unlucky happened!

Funny thing though, she couldn't even see the branches above her now and that just wasn't right. "Wha...?" She lifted a hand, flame slowly flickering to life along her fingers as she tried to see.

"Don't let her speak! Even a single word could harm you!"

Karren spun toward the sound of that voice, hand held before her as a single point of light in the choking darkness. She was an old woman. She'd lived through The Solution, seven children, and two husbands. She didn't scare easily anymore...but she was terrified now. In a fit of rational thought she dropped her hand to the wagon, setting it ablaze, and making some people in the darkness yelp.

It didn't help.

She still couldn't see anything more than her own flame. Even the flame that crawled along the wagon slipped into obscurity for her; leaving just the light on her fingers. She opened her mouth, finally, to scream, and felt someone stuff a course rag between her teeth, the rough fabric slipping down her throat enough to make her gag instead of the pealing noise she'd intended. She felt her flailing arms being caught and wrenched behind her, something cool and wet slapping over her hands to douse the flame.

"You have all done well, children. Come, bring the demon. Let the rest burn."

The last thing she heard before something hard and sharp connected with her skull was the panicked screaming of her tugger, still hitched to the burning wagon.

He stood in the shadows, as they all did, but somehow he remained the centre of attention even before he spoke. When he did, it boomed and filled the great cave with the force of a mountain slide.

"Listen well, my darlings. Our Great Mother cries the storms that rip up her own body. She wails and weeps, and attempts to rid us of the infestation which has rotted her. Before the great sundering Her favoured children were strong, and powerful, and led the world as it was meant to be led.

"Oh, yes, they will tell you that we were one group amongst many, but you and I know better, my darlings. We are Her children, and they her enemies. I will tell you how it was, and we shall celebrate with Her, and she shall grow stronger and gather us back to her bosom.

"When the world was young She bore us from Her great body as Her children. We spread across the land, and She gave us all good things. The Katzu were her gift to us as well, large and strong to watch our herds and gifted with an animal cunning that let us keep them as beloved companions.

"They came from outside our Mother's arms, born not from Her but from the evil dreams of those who refuse Her teachings. Fair of form to tempt us from Her, they grew strong as we lost our roots.

"Some of us, too many of us, lost our way and the blood thinned; taking Her even farther from our needing hearts. We abandoned Her in pursuit of their skills; their drives, their sciences, their weapons and wars. We grew used to living side-by-side with demons and allowing them to have their ways.

"LOOK, my darlings! Look what that has brought us to! They created a monster in Japan, and they used that as an excuse to perform a so-called 'solution' that killed most of us! A solution indeed, a solution that tears goodness from the world for evil's sake! That tore our Mother apart and destroyed us! We are broken! We die, my darlings, and our children die, and they thrive!

"How many of you, my poor sisters, have felt your babies die before birth? How many of you, my poor brothers, have buried your heirs? Yet THEY grow by leaps and bounds, mouthing empty sorrows while their babies grow fat on our despair! Tempting us to birth half-demon children in the pretence that it will let us survive, rather than the truth! The truth that they want to subsume us in their evil!

"We can fight back, my darlings, we can help our Mother. We gather here, in one of Her sacred places, to offer her back the stolen life that evil has taken from us, and to be reborn stronger!

"Bring forth the demon! Bring forth the beast! Look at this!" his hand pulled back the blonde hair of the young Olia, no more than twenty, tears filling her eyes, "LOOK at how this demon-spawn seeks to make us feel sorry for her! To trick us into letting her go!" His voice softened, gentled, "There is no shame in admitting it; her demonic charms enflame even me. Forgive me, my sweet sisters, for last night she tempted me. Even knowing this creature wanted only to get loose, I could not help myself." His voice dripped with shame, self-loathing, and his begging was completely truthful.

"I am weak." the young girl's eyes overflowed as his hand in her hair tightened, ripping some of it out, "Too weak to lead you..."

He was cut off as another shame-filled voice called out; "No, no. The demon, it tempted me as well. Forgive me, forgive me!" and four or five others; secure in the anonymity of the darkness, admitted that they had also tasted the crying Olia girl. The Master in the shadows smiled, unseen by anyone but his Goddess.

"Sisters, we men are weak. Too weak, it seems. One of you must take on this burden, release our sins, give our Mother back her blood and power. Who will do it?" he looked across his flock, seeking one whose heart was quailing. Someone who was not, yet, bound to them. Seeing her secret fears he pointed, "You! My darling, will you take on this holy duty? I shall hold the demon, here, above our Mother's Womb. Her demon's power will be purified by our Mother, and She will bless us with fertility and vigour renewed!"

The trembling human woman's back stiffened as she passed her hand over her flat stomach, her lips firmed into a line. She accepted the knife from another hand and took steady steps to where he knocked the Olia's legs from under her, holding her head above a carved stone basin.

"Please..." the girl whispered; and the woman responded, "My man, you tempted him last night." as her arm came down with the same efficient motion that she used when butchering for the table. The shadow master kept hold of the dead girl, draining every drop carefully into the bowl.

"Take the first blessing, my darling." he encouraged as the congregation lined up in the darkness. The woman dipped her fingers into the blood, then suckled on them as she crawled into the Womb Room to dream of better days until the next person came to take her place.