THE sun had just begun to set as the wind drew in the scent of the mutilated strewn among the two standing in the doorway. The ancient door, rotten and seemingly fragile, would have been surprisingly efficient in keeping out intruders had not the robed man standing before it so effortlessly pushed it open. The older man Khaam stood behind him not daring to intrude. The outer door had already been sealed, the blood the glyphs were written in was still fresh.
The robed man's cloak swayed in the wind as he took in the scene before him. The living quarters was drenched in the blood and disconnected insides of the fragments of the people who had once lived there. Khaam listened first as the hooded man took in a deep breathe before he took several steps back in disgust.
"Do you enjoy such scents?" he dared to ask. The robed man turned slowly to face him. His eyes seemed to glow from behind the hood where they hid. The eyes closed as he drew back his head while a deep exhale escaped his lungs. Khaam did his best not to gasp. "But, you're…you're just a boy!" The "Boy" ran his hands back through his long auburn hair pushing it out of his face. He opened his ghostly almost white eyes.
He only appeared blind…
Before Khaam had thought that he had seen everything, the Boy opened his mouth to speak, causing the man to choke back yet another gasp. "They were here." He said in an impossibly aged yet still youthful voice. His teeth, Khaam had noticed, his canines particularly, were more pointed than a man's teeth should have been. The Boy turned to the doorway and took a step then stopped. He stood there for a moment before he slightly turned his head in a glance over his shoulder. "The glyphs…you made them?" he asked.
"I did." Khaam said crossing his arms as his eyes narrowed slightly. The Boy glanced at them and brought a hand up to one of the many characters drawn around the doorway extending several fingers but did not touch it. He drew closer to the symbol and sniffed.
"Pig's blood?" he chuckled. "Surely you could have used something more…complex?" Khaam's eyes widened. How the hell could you know that?
"Blood is blood." He said with disgust. "It matters not. And I'll say this, were it not needed, I would not participate in such barbaric and disgusting practices."
"It is not." Replied the Boy.
"What?" Khaam asked surprised. The Boy chuckled.
"The glyphs. You are right, they are not needed." He reached into his cloak and drew out a long white cloth. He held it for a moment watching the fabric dance as the wind cascaded through it. He then tossed it over his shoulder. "Here." He said as Khaam caught the suddenly now wet bundle. "Remove them."
"You must be out of your mind!" Khaam roared. "That seal was made for a reason! There were demons here! Who knows what they left in their wake! Or what…"He trailed off not wanting to think of what might happen were they to approach any of the corpses. He had known this family. A father, a mother, and two twin girls whom had just turned fifteen. They had been such a kind family, always sheltering those in need or the occasional traveler, always planning to build an inn.
"The hearts were torn out." Came the Boy's voice snapping Khaam out of his reminiscing of the victims. "And the brains are missing, so nothing will reanimate and nothing is intact enough to be possessed. Remove the glyphs."
"I'll do no such thing!" Khaam roared. "What right have you to pass judgment on these dead? You have no proof or credentials that even state you're being an investigator of any kind. Ha!" he scoffed. "How the Kavarh can trust someone as obscure as you are," he slowly reached into his vest and held to a dagger, "makes no sense to me," he drew forth the blade, "when you could be one of the very same devils!" he roared as he lunged for the boy.
The knife seemed to connect with the Boy's back, but Khaam immediately realized that it had only torn through fabric. He tore upward and sent the robe soaring in two pieces. The Boy leapt away, impossibly fast. Khaam had a single second to turn and find himself caught by the throat. The Boy's hand held fast and began to squeeze while Khaam struggled to force air into his lungs. "I will ask you again. Remove the glyphs. I warn you, do not waste my time for you have so very precious little of it-" The Boy had only enough time to finish the sentence before he winced. The dagger had found its way into his side. Khaam watched as the Boy's eyes narrowed, and began to change. A crimson stain began to form at the bottom of each orb, and soon all of the ocular fluid was as red as blood.
"You're…you're." Khaam choked the words out before the Boy slammed the side of his face into the wall next to the doorframe. Khaam blinked several times as the world for a moment went white, and his own blood began to run into his eyes. A new feeling of the flesh of his face tearing joined the pain from the blow to his face.
The Boy lifted the older man like he was only a doll, and used the side of Khaam's face as though it were a sponge to smear the blood of the glyphs from frame. Khaam gagged as the blood ran down his face and entered his nose and mouth. Knowing it was pointless to struggle, he hung there, lifelessly, as the Boy finished. When it was over, the Boy let go of Khaam who dropped to a near unconscious mess on the ground. The boy entered the house and again took in the scene around him. The man, or what was once a man, presumably the father, lay slumped up against the wall, legs spread, head to the side, below a trail of blood above him that had flown from the large splatter of gore. He saw a slight glistening of light from the tiny bit of blood that still poured out of the dark hole in the man's chest.
Several feet away it sounded as if something stirred. The Boy's eyes immediately darted through the nearly dark room to a pile of bodies. He stepped over the body that was once the mother and stopped. The bodies sprawled out together were exact. The daughters.
"Don't!" Khaam coughed. "Don't you dare!" the Boy turned to see the older man standing, barely, in the doorway, panting.
"Stay where you are Old Man. Unless you want to be food for what's in here-" the Boy whirled his head around, "There!" Khaam watched the Boy throw something, what it was he could not see, at a dark shape that moved on the floor. There was the sound of something sharp hitting the floor followed by a low hiss as whatever had been there dove into the pile of the two tangled bodies. "Damn it." The Boy muttered under his breath.
"What is that?" Khaam demanded. The daughters lay sprawled on the floor, one slumped over the other who gazed up at the Boy, her mouth hanging open and her glazed eyes devoid of life. The shoulder of the sister lying face down over the other twitched several times, making a sort of snapping sound resembling a tree branch breaking. "Oh god!" Khaam gasped. He took a step forward and instantly regretted it.
"I told you, stay out!" the Boy cried, before somehow knowing to dart to the side without even seeing the girl's shoulder exploded in a mess of flesh and bone fragments as an obnoxiously long skeletal arm wrapped tightly in a disgusting fleshy sinew shot forth and grabbed Khaam by the throat. Khaam was lifted high off of the floor as he was pulled completely into the house.
The body on the floor began to writhe, the hands and legs kicking and flailing as the eyes of the face rolled back into it's head while the mouth opened and closed as it belted out a horrible cacophony of hellish origin. The arm appeared to lower Khaam to the floor before it flung him high into the air. Khaam screamed as he soared above the room landing nearly on his head in the loft above. He lay there for a moment in a daze before the sounds he heard made him come to. Rolling onto his stomach, he crawled toward the railing and gazed through at the scene below.
The daughters both turned so that they appeared opposite each other, the first now face down the second face up, back to back, the second resting on the first. Khaam nearly covered his eyes as the second daughter opened her now white eyes, gazed up at him, and smiled. The sounds of flesh twisting and fusing rang out in the room as the bodies twisted this way and that. The daughter that had been lying face down pushed herself up on all fours as her arms and legs seemed to stretch and shape into something hideous, each ending in threatening sets of talons.
As the ghastly metamorphosis took place the Boy only stood still, a look of expressionless apathy shown on his face. The clothing on the two bodies stretched and tore off completely as the two bodies fused together into a large quadruped. The arms and legs of the second girl now resembled something entirely different. As they moved slowly about, the digits that had once been fingers and toes seemed to melt together into a large lump before large blades pushed through each one in a cloud of blood. Their hair, once beautiful flowing red hair, fell to the floor in several disgusting plops. The end of the hideous "rebirth" was marked by several tearing sounds. The mouth of the "Bottom Daughter" opened and spilled out the liquefied remains of what had once been in its skull. The top of its head began to twist open into a large mouth with a row of jagged dagger teeth. The hideous mouth opened along with the mouth of the "Top Sister" in a terrible mix of two screams, one a high-pitched feminine shriek the other an otherworldly bestial roar. The boy smiled.
"A Puppeteer." He said with intrigue as he disregarded the abomination in front of him. He took several steps and began to pace as he reached into his long coat. "While I've never seen one of your sort before, I have heard of you." He pulled out his hand that now grasped a single crescent blade. The Beast's second shoulder burst open and a second fleshy, skeletal arm shot forth. "Well, you aren't lacking in symmetry, are you? That denotes intelligence." He smiled. "I have some questions for you Sir, or would you prefer Madam?"
Both faces of the beast chuckled their human/inhuman laugh. "How sweet your tongue is, Little Man. I sincerely hope the rest of your flesh is as sweet when I gorge myself on it!" the faces replied in unison. It took a single step forward, shaking the house as it stomped. The Boy laughed.
"Tell me, who is your master? If you cooperate, I promise you will feel little pain when I dismiss you." The Beast roared as it brought its front legs up and then down in a stomp as it arched its back. "Don't like threats?" the Boy mocked as he held the sickle in both hands brining it up to his face. "Well," he began as he swiftly swung his hands to the sides, now holding a sickle in each. "Aren't you the hypocrite?"
"Die!" the Beast screamed as two of the bladed arms from its back shot forward. Khaam watched as the Boy barely seemed to move. He could not see the Boy's arms move as the sickles sliced through the arms, severing both. The arms fell to the floor and twitched, wounds cauterized from the blades, red hot, crimson in glow. "Damn you!" the Beast roared. It rushed forward into the Boy who let go of one of the sickles before he leapt into the air. Somersaulting over the Beast, the Boy hacked off another of the bladed arms before landing on top of the monstrosity and reached for the remaining arm with his free hand. He turned and looked at the Top Sister's face as he twisted the arm. He smiled, a sadistic look in his once again red eyes, as he plunged the blade, tearing off the arm, into the throat of the Top Sister. The face screamed, drops of blood raining down on her chin as the arm flopped about cascading blood all over the dwelling.
"You like that?" the Boy asked in a cruel whisper. The face screamed again as the Boy lift the sickle over his head, the red glow fading from the metal. The skeletal arms shot toward him as he leapt down to the side of the Beast, bring down the sickle and severing the beast in half. The lower half kicked about repeatedly as it emptied of blood and bodily juices while the top half, aided by the skeletal hands that were grasping the window frame, struggled to an upright position. The bestial head bit into the wall for further support. The Top Sister's face watched the Boy, as its vision began to flicker and slowly fade, as he walked over and bent down to pick up the discarded sickle. He placed both back into his coat before he turned and took several steps toward what was left of the Beast.
"Those blades," the Face choked forth, "That power…That-" the Face opened its mouth and a disgustingly long tentacle of a tongue jutted out and found its way to the Boy's leg. It began to probe the bit of exposed flesh before the Boy made an expression of disgust and seemed to throw something, which Khaam once again could not see, at the tongue, severing it. "That scent!" the Face screamed in pain. "The blood that flows through you…is…is." Khaam watched as the Boy seemed to glow, wreathed in flames. His visage grew dark and fiendish, his now taloned hands looked almost metallic aside from the rest of him. "The blood of Ifri-" the face was interrupted as the Boy's inhuman fist smashed into it before the entire room exploded into flames. The force of the blast sent Khaam screaming through the window behind him. He fell a story before he hit the ground outside of what was left of the house.
Khaam lay there in a pile of glass and debris before he struggled to lift his head. Where the house had once stood a raging fire had now taken its place. He saw the Boy, now appearing as he had been before, standing untouched by the flames. He opened his almost white eyes and sighed as he began to walk out of what was left of the flaming building. As the Boy stepped past him, not in any way harmed, Khaam could smell the scent of the home and the flesh of those that once lived here emanating from him…