THE JEALOUSY OF JALICE

Annilasia couldn’t hear anything other than a shrill ringing in her ears.

Every direction she turned, following every slash of her sword or swing of the torch, the white skulls of the flayers met her. No time to catch her breath or construe a strategy; if she hesitated even a second, an outstretched claw would end her. Blood covered both skin and clothes, along with new wounds crisscrossing over her arms and legs. Previously scabbed gashes had reopened on her shoulder and burned like fire against her sweat-soaked tunic. Muscles screamed for rest; lungs pleaded for air.

The constant barrage of attacks demanded full concentration, leaving her no energy or time to keep Inzerious silent. The dokojin blasted uninhibited screeches into the fray of sounds already assaulting her. It laughed at each drop of blood and chattered whenever terror flashed in Annilasia. Yet whatever glee it basked in wasn’t enough to appease it. Inzerious wanted more than secondhand carnage.

“Filthy bloodbag—let me loose and I will end these nuisances,” the dokojin begged. “Or use aether. Tear them to pieces and steal their souls. Give me something to feed from.”

Inzerious’s desires seeped into her, becoming her own. Annilasia thirsted for death and hungered for violence and terror. A flayer pushed her to the ground, causing her to drop her sword. As she gripped at matted fur to keep the flayer at bay, panic at the loss of control swept over her.

“Yes, Bloodspill, yes,” said Inzerious. “Feed me. Let me crush this pathetic excuse for sentience.”

Annilasia screamed and pushed the flayer off before rolling away from it. She gritted her teeth while rising up. “Dying stars, will you shut up!”

“You stubborn, stupid sack of mush,” snapped Inzerious. “Keep denying me, and I will sever your soul from your body and eat it—”

The violent threats distorted in the chaos around her. Somewhere she heard Mygo shout Vowt’s name. He sounded frantic, but she couldn’t break away to help. Not with two flayers flanking her. She fumbled for the oil flask and managed to retrieve it despite shaking hands.

One shot would be all she’d get. She’d already lost too much of the oil from clumsy failed attempts. Knowing the other flayer might easily intercept her, Annilasia cried out and leapt towards its kin. The creature tried to catch her in an upward swipe, but her charge caught it off guard. Running along its side, she sprayed out the contents of the flask and careened past it.

As she twisted around to face the same flayer again, she glimpsed flashes of Mygo locked in battle with the other flayers. Her eyes caught what might’ve been a human body on the ground beside him. She didn’t look again to confirm. When her motion brought her face to face with her own flayers, she jumped in her skin to find one of them already charging. Quick visuals told her it wasn’t the one doused in oil.

She reacted too quickly. Desperate to evade the charging beast, she stumbled and fell to the ground. The torch flew from her grip and toppled end over end out of reach. Seconds passed as she stared at the lost item—her only means of defeating these bastards.

“Clumsy, Bloodspill,” sneered Inzerious.

Time slowed. She rolled to her back, fully aware that the flayers would be looming above her and poised to strike. In that slip of time, a buried agitation boiled over from the depths of her soul.

She was going to die. Here—at the Black House—with Jalice inside, who would be completely oblivious to the carnage to which she’d subjected Annilasia and these two men. Annilasia’s eyes soaked up the view of the two hideous skulls snarling down at her, the claws moments away from bearing down. She had no time to dodge or deflect either of the incoming blows.

“Time’s up, Bloodspill,” Inzerious barked. “Rip the obliatore.”

Annilasia didn’t recognize the term, yet somehow this didn’t seem to matter. The response came as naturally as an instinctive muscle flinch or an eyeblink. She reached into her pocket, pulling out the ink-blotted card between pinched fingers. Her other hand rose up. Calloused fury spilled over, and she opened her mouth to unleash a scream that was drowned out the instant she tore the card in half.

A rush of wind lashed out at the flayers, accompanied by a deafening sound louder than thunder. All other noise vanished—even Inzerious’s incessant jabbering.

The energy emitting from the card intertwined with her anger, reaching a zenith of overwhelming power that charged out of Annilasia. A flash of relief surfaced in the wake of the savage expulsion of emotion. The immense power that propelled from the card—a strange amalgam of foreign spark and emotional fuel—seized her with awe. No wind held this intensity. No teardrop had ever fallen with such passion.

The flayers peeled apart in an airborne display of blooming organs, blood, and shredded skin. The grisly scene occurred faster than Annilasia’s mind should’ve been able to compute. Yet by some depraved miracle, it unfolded before her like dandelion seeds detaching carelessly from a stem.

When the last piece of flesh struck the ground, time resumed its expected flow. Annilasia stared up at the grey sky for a moment before sitting up, stunned. She peered past her legs, disgust rolling in her stomach. All that remained of her attackers were the back limbs, felled like timber and oozing blood.

A conflicting glee wrestled with her revulsion. Annilasia groaned upon the return of Inzerious’s voice.

“That felt good, didn’t it, Bloodspill?” the dokojin cackled. “Did you hear their flesh as it ripped apart and the crack of their bones shattering from the aether?”

“No,” Annilasia breathed.

“Yes,” it hissed. “You used aether—and you’re alive because of it, you unthankful filth.”

Annilasia shot to her feet. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t do that. The card had aether. It wasn’t me.” She stumbled over the dismembered legs, yelping when she tripped and almost fell across one. Spotting her sword, she bent down and wrapped her hand around it. A fiery sting sizzled across her skin. She howled and fell onto the ground, hands shaking as the skin continued to blister and inflame.

“Stupid Bloodspill,” said Inzerious. “Metal and aether don’t bed well together.”

Annilasia gritted her teeth and groaned as brief convulsions rippled across her. Again she heard Mygo shouting nearby. The sound ushered her to stumble back onto her feet, but she froze when her eyes fell on a flap of skin still clinging to one of the flayer’s legs.

The impossibility of the sight kept her paralyzed too long. Nearby, other flayers shrieked. Perhaps they were headed her way, but she couldn’t break her gaze.

Across the shredded piece of skin—no doubt once part of the flayer’s hairless hide based on its composition—a pattern of black-inked tattoos assumed the distinct shape of a soaring eagle. She’d only seen that pattern on one individual. Terrizo. The same hirishu who had stalked Jalice, and whose remains Annilasia had found strewn about like morbid decorations in the forest.

“Can you see them?” Inzerious asked with euphoric frenzy. “They howl so loudly. What a mess of souls these imbeciles are. I see a man, I see a fox. I see a woman, I see a bearolf.”

Annilasia flinched at Inzerious’s chanting. Her voice lowered to a mere whisper, too frightened she was to voice her suspicions. “What are you talking about?”

“Those ilk you slaughtered,” said Inzerious. “I’m draining them now. The aether you released mixed with your own and freed them so I could feed.”

“But they weren’t men,” said Annilasia even as she looked upon the skin boasting the ink design. “They were beasts.”

“Beasts, yes. Men, yes. Both.”

Annilasia couldn’t breathe. She stood in a haunted trance, the distant cries of Mygo and the growls of other flayers barely touching thought. Some part of her refused to let her look away. The hide of this flayer had once belonged to a human—to someone she’d known. The pieces slowly fell into place, and she gagged, stumbling away in a desperate need to escape the revelation battering her.

The flayers wore the skins of their carved victims.