A/N: Originally posted as part of Heket's Brood, but my brain worked on this overnight (of course :p). It has a new beginning, a new end, and Julayan's wife has been given a name as well as a presence. Enjoy (again). C:
I had fun with this one, not gonna lie.
How to deal with a Traitor
A cult's faith would ebb and flow like the tide – Kallamar's words – or wax and wane like the moon – Shamura's – in response to their actions and reactions. Heket had no flowery words to describe this herself, but they were right.
Whenever she announced the arrival of a new clutch of eggs, and again when they had hatched, the faith of her cult was strengthened, particularly by those with, expecting or planning on having children of their own.
Julayan and Anara were two such individuals. They were husband and wife, and as loyal and trusted followers had been made deacons to serve in her cult.
"Our heartiest congratulations, Lady Heket," Julayan praised. "As the parents of three wonderful daughters ourselves, we are always delighted to hear of others being blessed with the joy of raising children." She received their praise with a bow of her head. "When will they be old enough to leave the water?"
"In a few months," she replied.
"We look forward to welcoming them into the temple." He turned to Anara and took her hand with a smile, before turning back. "And would be happy to offer our services in the future, should you ever have need of them."
Looking back, Heket should've known that something was wrong when both were absent from the weekly assemblage of deacons without having given prior notice. But they had children, and sometimes children went sick unexpectedly, so she had thought nothing of it at the time. And while normally she would punish such offences, they were loyal followers and so she could afford to be lenient in such cases.
Heket knew something was wrong when she smelt blood on the wind, coming from the direction of the pond. Her brow furrowed in concern and she wasted no time in walking there to investigate, instead of conjuring a portal. When she emerged on the other side, the pond had turned red, as a group of heretics were in the process of butchering her tadpoles by gutting them as if they were fish. An enraged howl tore from her still healing throat causing an explosion of pain and she tasted blood.
The heretics looked over and their eyes nearly fell out of the heads. They froze momentarily, until a dark brown bison shouted, bringing them out of their stupor "R-run! Run everyone!" They dropped what they were doing – one dropping a tadpole with a dagger still in their belly back into the water – and booked it.
She practically dove into a portal in pursuit. Emerging on the other side she sent several heads rolling and others stumbling back, clutching throats now gushing blood, with a powerful sweep of her sickle, before they could react or change course. She caught another trying to slip by and slammed him to the earth by his face. His head exploded under her hand like a pumpkin splattering to the ground.
The remaining heretics screamed and tried to scatter, but she reacted quickly before they could get too far. She slammed her hands to the ground and entangling vines erupted forward in a cone, catching the fleeing heretics in their grasp. The vines were pulled taught and they hit the ground hard, now pinned. She stalked over and summoned her sickle to hold it to one of the trapped heretics' throats.
Before she could speak, however, she paused to cough and blood painted the grass. "Which one of you… is your leader?" She rasped. Predictably they were silent, staring back defiantly. But both their defiance and the silence was shattered as she dragged her sickle slowly across the heretic's throat. As her screams turned to gargles as she began to choke on her own blood, Heket moved onto the next. "Which one of you is your leader?"
"I am. I am!" The bison shouted, as she had anticipated. "I'm the one you want."
She sneered. "Then you're the only one I need." She clenched her fist and the other heretics began to thrash and scream and scream and scream as the vines constricted.
"No! Stop!" Until with a crunch and a splutch and a spray of blood, were crushed into a bloody pulp. "NO!" He howled before gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes closed. Then he glared at her with watery eyes filled with hatred. "You… you…" He had no words to voice it aloud.
She grabbed him by the vines still binding his body and dragged him back to the pond.
There she paused to stare out across the bloody water and her fists clenched as tears pricked her eyes. She was no stranger to loss, but this… this galled her. If Narinder was still here he would've warned her. The thought made her bare her teeth in anger and hatred; If Narinder was still here, the heretics would not have been so emboldened. She waded into the pond and carefully scooped the discarded tadpole into her arms. "Ma…ma…"
"I am here, my child." They were cold from shock, and their eyes were glassing over. There was no saving them, so she pulled the dagger from their belly to let the blood gush from the wound.
The tadpole began to cry. "Ma...ma…"
"Hush now, my child, it is all right." She rocked them gently and sang them into death. When they took their last breath, she sighed, and placed their body back in the water.
"Well, who would've thought, that a monster like you could be capable of love, Heket," the bison snarked. "Especially considering what you do to them."
She turned to him, baring her teeth in a snarl as she fought back the urge to tear him to shreds with her bare hands. Instead the snarl became a sneer. "And was that your intention this day, heretic? To spare them from that fate? There were faster ways to kill them if that were true." His glare was answer enough and only served to grow her sneer in strength. "Hah. Then I am not the only monster here, hypocrite." She coughed again and again blood splattered the ground, and a hand went to her throat.
"Aww, what's the matter?" His voice was laced with fake concern. "Does your throat hurt, Heket?" But she did not rise to the bait.
She stared at him in contemplation. While the existence of her children was no secret, nor was the general location of their nursery, this attack spoke of inside knowledge. Not only had they evaded patrols to reach so far into her territory – the pond was not far from her temple – but they had begun their assault on her tadpoles after she had given them their third meal, when she would not return again until the evening to put them to bed. She spoke at length. "I have questions for you, heretic."
"By all means," he snarked back. "I won't answer a single one."
"I do not require you to speak," she replied easily, "nor your co-operation." Before he could express his confusion, she gripped the sides of his head none too gently, and before the gaze of her crown, his mind opened to her like a book.
Who had given him this information? Julayan? What? No! Julayan was a loyal and trusted follower, one of her deacons! When had he been turned?! And how could she not have noticed?! So she dug deeper. From what she could glean it seemed Julayan was a recent convert. She had also uncovered the attack on her tadpoles much earlier than planned; The heretics were supposed to have slipped away, and she to discover the carnage upon her return in the evening. And the ensuing chaos that would've erupted in the wake of this discovery was supposed to hide his departure. With a scream of anger and betrayal, the bison's head disappeared in an explosion of blood and brain matter, and his headless corpse slumped to the ground. This… this had to be addressed, immediately!
Just as she was about to warp back to her temple in a rage, from the pond she heard, "Mama?" She whipped her head around so fast that she felt a stab of pain in her throat. There amid all the blood and the corpses of their siblings, was a lone tadpole poking their head out of the water. "Mama?"
Her eyes went wide. "My child!" She waded into the water and picked them up to examine them for injuries. They did not look well though that was to be expected with the water being choked with blood but were otherwise unharmed, so she pulled them into a relieved hug. Thank the stars one of them had survived. "My child," she rasped. "Are you alone?" They shook their head and her eyes widened again. "There are more of you?"
They nodded. "We were scared, Mama… So we hid…"
She hummed and nodded, then kissed their forehead. "Then you were wise."
"Mama…" The tadpole began to cry. "Mama… Mama…"
"Hush, my child. You are safe now."
"Mama…"
As much as she wanted to stay and comfort them further, she had other more pressing matters to attend to, so she placed them back in the water. "Find the rest of your siblings. I will return when I have found you a new home."
"O-okay," they sniffled before disappearing into the blood.
A congregation of concerned followers was awaiting her return. "Lady Heket!" They chorused. "What news?"
She scanned the crowd for Julayan and Anara, but predictably they were absent. "Where are Julayan and Anara?"
"They left in the direction of their quarters in a hurry soon after your departure."
She bared her teeth; She bet they had. "Apprehend them. And their children. And bring them all to me."
Hollers of indignation preceded their arrival and the family of giraffes were thrown to the floor before her. Julayan got to his knees, as did Anara. "L-Lady Heket? What have we done to deserve such treatment?"
She narrowed her eyes at him; As if he didn't know. "Heretics have attacked and killed my tadpoles." Mutters of horror from the gathered crowd greeted this statement. "I searched their leader's mind. They named you as the one responsible for this atrocity."
He bowed his head. "My-my Lady. Do not take the words of a heretic over mine. I am, as always, your loyal follower."
"Then you will not object to my searching your mind to determine the truth." She gripped the sides of his head before he could protest, and with the gaze of her crown, she opened his mind like a book.
There was a bitter irony to the cause of his conversion; He and Anara had recently learned what the Rite of Starvation – the rite enforced on her children in order to reduce their numbers – actually entailed. What they had assumed was that they fasted for a month, and that only the strongest survived, while the rest died of starvation. As parents, they were uncomfortable with the practice but reluctantly understood it to be necessary for the wellbeing of Anura. That her tadpoles devoured each other in desperation they found appalling. And this had led them down a road of questioning that culminated in dissent, and was the reason for their absence from the assembly. So what would they think of the heretics slaughtering her tadpoles instead of killing them quickly? No doubt they would be appalled by that too.
She released his head, baring her teeth in displeasure. "So it is true. You are in league with the heretics, and so are a heretic yourself." A handful of her followers moved forward at these words and seized the family so they could not escape. Her gaze turned to Anara. "And what of your involvement?" While both were dissenters, the heretic had only named Julayan, so she searched Anara's mind for the answer.
It had been Julayan's idea to kill the tadpoles and use the chaos to hide their escape, so he had been the one to get in contact with a group of heretics to enlist their aid. But she had approved of the plan which made her complicit.
"So you knew," she uttered simply.
"What should we do with them, Lady Heket?" One of her followers asked.
She narrowed her eyes and hummed to herself in thought; That was a good question. Her gaze swept over them, coming to rest on their children. And suddenly she knew exactly what she was going to do. "As your accomplices butchered my children, so I will butcher yours."
Their eyes widened in horror. "No… No!" Julayan uttered as Anara begged. "No, please!"
She turned to one of her ritualists. "Gut them as you would a fish," she instructed. "But do it slowly." They begged and screamed for mercy as they fought desperately against their captors, and as her ritualists threw their three children to the floor one by one. With one restraining their arms and a second their legs, the third pulled out a ritual dagger and slowly slit open their bellies from sternum to groin, as they struggled and sobbed and screamed in pain, and called for their parents.
Heket watched them wreathe and squirm on the floor in agony for a moment before catching the eyes of her followers and nodding; As she had comforted her own children, so would allow them this. Julayan and Anara were released, and they both crawled to and then cradled their dying children with tears streaming down their faces. "Mommy… Daddy… it hurts," the children sobbed. "It hurts…"
"I know, my darlings, I know," Anara soothed them tearfully.
Heket stared at her as she wondered what punishment should befall her? Should she be gutted as well? Should she eat her? She had simply executed the others, so perhaps Anara should be simply executed as well for being an accomplice. "Anara," she rasped. "As you are an accomplice to this atrocity. So you will be executed as one."
"Wha-?" A ritualist yanked her back by her hair and had slit her throat before she had finished speaking. Julayan howled as she dropped, clutching the wound, gagging and choking as the blood gushed forth. He cradled her in his arms until she had breathed her last, then looked up at Heket with pain and hatred in his eyes. "And what're you going to do to me?"
She had given that some thought too, so she wordlessly raised a hand to drain the energy from his body, and he dropped to the ground, clutching his stomach, now ravenous with hunger. She dragged him down to the dungeons and threw him into one of the cells. "I will return in one month," she told him. "Should you desire to live or even to be free, you will sustain yourself on these." She threw in the limp bodies of his children still clinging to life, and the corpse of his wife. "If not, then I will return to claim your corpse. The choice is yours." His curses and howls of anguish and hatred filled her ears as she left. And her smile was one of satisfaction.
Heket returned a month later to a broken man. "So you are still alive," she remarked. Julayan stared back with eyes filled with despair. He had succumbed to the power of starvation – as all did – and so had eaten the corpses of his wife and children in desperation. "Will you return to my cult, Julayan? Will you become once again my loyal follower? Has hunger been your teacher this month?"
Tears began to leak from his eyes. "Never… Never… I'll never rejoin your horrid cult… I… I'd rather die."
She hummed. "Then it seems the bodies of your wife and children have gone to waste. What a pity." He looked away and his body began to shake as his tears turned to sobs. "Very well, heretic. I will give you what you desire." She opened the cell and he closed his eyes in anticipation of the end. Instead she dragged him from it, and out of the dungeons.
He looked up her in confusion. "Where are you taking me?… Just end it already… What more do you think you can do to me?"
"It is my recollection that you had looked forward to meeting my children."
"What?" He eyes widen slowly. "They… they survived?"
"A small number of them, yes." She dragged him into the dining hall and over to a table of nine froglets, who were patiently awaiting their breakfast.
"Mother!" They chorused happily. "Mother, can we eat now?" One asked. "We're so hungry."
"Please, Mother," the others chorused.
She smiled. "Of course you can, my children. I was just fetching your breakfast." Julayan's eyes widened in horror and he began to struggle. No. No! Not like this! Not like this! She threw him to the ground before them. "Here you are, my children, eat up." The froglets' eyes widened in surprise and delight. Live meat! They looked to her to reaffirm her permission. She smiled again and gestured. "Well, go on now. Are you not hungry?"
They descended on him all at once. Julayan had no strength to run, or fight them off. He struggled pitifully and screamed as they devoured him mouthful by mouthful, until there was nothing left but a blood stain. She gently picked a chunk of uneaten flesh off one of their bloody faces and popped it into her mouth. "Now," she smiled down at them. "Let us get you cleaned up."
A/N: Me when the ending idea popped into my head: Oh, so that's what she meant by "claim his corpse".