Snakebite

Raum jolts as if defibrillated. A man in bloodstained scrubs draws away from him, a foul-smelling capsule in his hand, and calls, “he is back."

The sharp odour of the capsule, which the doctor closes, stabilises Raum enough to make some observations. He is laying on the floor of a lounge in the palace, not far from where Mason’s surprise attack took place. The light coming in from the windows is no longer blue with fire, and instead has the subtle quality of noon. Some time has passed since Raum fainted.

In that time, Raum has undergone surgery. He traces a trail of stitches across his stomach and chest, aghast, as he slowly pieces the situation together. The onlooking surgeon gently tells him to lay still and confirms what’s happened. He has suffered an extremely serious injury, and needs to focus on recovery for at least the next month. For now, that just means lying still — too much movement could easily rupture the sutures keeping his organs together…

The doctor’s advisories blurble into mush as the rush of the smelling salts fades. He sits up, distressing the doctor, and puts his hand to his forehead. A sheen of sweat cakes his fingers near immediately, his clothes stick clammily to his back, a rush of snails draw tracks down his arms. The back of his throat convulses, and his vision blurs. He needs to puke.

Nothing comes up when he retches, so nothing eases the nausea. His head throbs, his skin burns, even his blood burns as if pumping not life but venom. He retches again. Something is very wrong.

The doctor, observing his fever, notes that he may have caught ill during the operation. This looks quite aggressive. But, the palace does have remedies from the north for that. The doctor turns to speak to someone else, across the room. A regimen of cleansers, a week of bed rest, and another three weeks of dedicated recovery. Then we can begin to consider whether he’s out of the woods.

Aquila puts aside his book, rises from his chair, and comes over.

A flush of pleasant warmth blazes across Raum’s cheeks, momentarily driving the fever out. Man, Raum thinks, he’s hot.

But once he registers the vaguely quizzical, but altogether serious look on Aquila’s face, that momentary infatuation snaps away. He cringes as he wipes his palm over his cheek. Not the time.

“I shall hope it is only fever," Aquila quietly tells the doctor while squinting at Raum appraisingly, then smiles and begins a light back and forth to gauge Raum’s responsiveness.

Finding himself able to follow conversation, despite the dizzying nausea, Raum groggily asks what happened.

Aquila quickly explains that the attackers have been subdued and diplomacy with the Tyrant has concluded in line with Aquila’s expectations. Things are broadly settled for now. That said, Raum was right to suspect that servant. Preliminary questioning has found him affiliated to old, long-disbanded assassin groups, and it was likely with his aid that the terrorist from yesterday managed to infiltrate the castle. Similarly, the guard Raum had sent to apprehend this man was found stripped of his clothes and bound in a closet. The motives behind this duo warrant further investigation, but given they appear to be lone wolf attacks rather than parts of a syndicate, for now that is not important.

‘The terrorist from yesterday’. Aquila might skim over that topic, but Raum’s mind catches on it firmly. Mason, by Raum’s own hands, his own father… a dark shudder rises inside him, coursing through his skin, heavy with so much guilt he could bawl.

—Rather, I wished to confirm something with you, interrupts Aquila. Raum takes the distraction gratefully.

Aquila asks how Raum is feeling.

Like shit. Like all the fluids inside his body are pus, crap that he needs to puke out. Like his head is filling with tar, and his sweat is tar, his body is tar. Everything just feels sick.

Is there much pain? Aquila asks.

His stomach hurts when he moves, but otherwise nothing’s burning. Kind of tingly, just everywhere, though.

Does anywhere feel notably strange, or peculiar?

No… just—another wave of oppressive nausea pumps out from Raum’s core, squeezing out from his chest to his arm a glop of cold semen. Screaming, Raum bashes his arm over his knee, claws at the skin, desperate to puncture the sac of rapecum and drain it all onto the floor. The doctor quickly restrains his hand and pins him to sit still. Raum holds the afflicted arm as far away as he can, sobbing, as another pulse finishes like a deflating cock and another run of milky filth shoots into his arm.

The sac sags in his flesh like an ill-fitted implant. A consciousness then strikes him, as he yells, that the inside of his mouth is vacuous. A dryness scrapes from his throat to his tongue, insisting, thirsting, why have these cavities not been packed full…

The filth in his arm settles, no longer bulging uncomfortably, into his flesh like a stain. The accompanying nausea subsides momentarily, but that still isn’t any great comfort. While the rest of his body tingles, as if in the field of a lightning strike, only that one stained patched in his arm feels stable, settled, and normal, though its edges burn against the rest of his flesh. The doctor runs his thumb over the area. It produces a pleasant tingle, like a gentle scratch or a rub of the roots of the hair, which Raum tries to focus on instead of everything else.

The doctor presents Raum’s arm to Aquila, pulling back the skin. A patch of small white barbs peek out from his underarm, just barely revealed.

As Raum squirms, Aquila appraises them. “Pinfeathers."

The doctor releases Raum’s arm. Raum scrapes his tongue across the roof of his mouth, swallows just to fill his throat with something, retches, sweats, and as if it will uproot the whole rotten patch, goes to pluck out the barbs.

Aquila raises his hand and tells him not to. That will only hurt him.

Raum itches at the barbs, letting himself take the comfort through his shuddering, squinting miserably.

This will be difficult to hear, but it is important that you stay calm, Aquila begins. I am able to diagnose your state.

Raum exhales out his nose. Keeping his mouth only half-open feels weird.

Raum has taken a hit from Kingslayer, which has the property of confounding magic. One of the ways it may do so is by reversing the conceptual polarity of a magical effect. Further, the blood of house Asphodel, which purifies souls of rot, is susceptible to Kingslayer’s effects.

What has happened is, the polarity of the purification Phoenix performed on Raum’s soul several months ago has been reversed. Since Asphodelean blood is not a transient effect, but an enchantment that holds upon a soul permanently, now that the polarity of that enchantment has been reversed, Raum’s soul is not simply susceptible to rot, or rotting as it naturally would have upon his death prior, but actively and aggressively being corrupted by deviant Aspodelean blood.

In short, Raum is currently, and quickly, transforming into a ghoul.

Though Raum recoils, he questions: …what does that mean? Ghouls aren’t common in Ordanz the way they are here. What does it mean to ‘transform into a ghoul’? Raum goes to ask, but flinches upon opening his mouth, and rubs his throat, swallowing.

The end result of this process, Aquila says, seeing Raum’s confusion, is that he will lose his faculty of conscious thought and degenerate into a quite literally inhuman monster of some supernaturally malevolent stripe. Though not a compassionate term to use, he is vaguely fortunate that his transformation has manifested by priming his body for the changes first, thereby reducing the pain substantially, and extremely fortunate that the process seems to be slanting more physical than mental for now.

Aquila cards his fingers through his hair, presses his palm to his forehead.

To state it bluntly, Aquila continues, you are already lost.

As comprehension of his situation finally clicks, the dread properly sweeps in. Raum’s hand trembles on his throat, his cheeks and gut strain taut. What Aquila’s saying is—but this can’t be right, there are things Raum needs to do. What about everything? Their plans?

And how is Aquila so goddamn calm? Granted, it’s the only thing keeping Raum from panicking himself, but…

“Wh-wha," Raum manages, not so much restricted by his strained throat as simply clueless what to say.

There is a cure, says Aquila, flicking back a lock of hair.

The surgeon goggles at Aquila as if he just confessed to the existence of Nessie. Ignoring him, Raum’s shoulders relax an inch.

Aquila flicks out his hand to barter. How well can Raum stand?

As the surgeon carefully (and reluctantly) helps inch him up, the answer is, ‘painfully, but able’. But, why…?

Aquila nods, thumb to his chin.

And he says, “You must run."

Sweat slices across Raum’s skin as he sprints through the tunnels.

The knives stabbing through his stomach, the sickness choking at his limbs, the fog throbbing through his head, the iron welling in his lungs — every part of his body screams that he shouldn’t be doing this. Sand weighs his every cell down. And though his footfalls peal on and on, the end of this hallway looks no closer than it did half a mile ago.

Exhausted, Raum’s pace slows. He pauses to retch, spits up blood, cradles his stomach. Panting, he sets his throbbing forehead on the cool, stone wall.

He started this marathon at noon. It is spring, so it is approximately in eight hours from then that the sun will set.

Given the speed of the transformation so far, Raum thinks as he runs his claws through the blanket of black feathers covering his arm, Aquila was right to call that his hard deadline. If anything, the changes have been acceller—

Raum squeals as another lash of frigid cum whips itself across his shoulders. His muscles underneath writhe, swell, tighten, squirm, like a single swipe of a chisel, pulling that one line of his body into a subtly different shape. As his shoulderblades grind lower, he pushes himself off the wall and again refocuses on nothing but running.

—The cure Aquila mentioned is not in Ferendaux, or anywhere else from where it could be delivered. It is in the treasure vault of the Cardinal House in Sebilles.

Nobody but Raum can go there in daytime. But even if an envoy went in faster than the injured Raum, and evaded Phoenix to reach the vault, it wouldn’t matter. The vault is locked with wards, the combination to which Phoenix changes regularly. Not even Aquila can crack it.

Raum must reach Sebilles, find Phoenix, and get him to retrieve this holy panacea from the vault.

He turns the corner of the hallway. The glow of red light from the crypt wards falls upon him, and the jump of distance as he passes through, teleporting to the other side, dizzies him with momentary relief. But truly, only momentary. He can only make this trip in this timeframe at all because teleporting through the ward cuts out so much travel. In terms of miles he must actually run, he is still only barely halfway.

Raum grits his teeth and takes a breath. His jackhammer heart begs for rest. The feathers down his arm flare out, and fold in, in time with the hot and cold flashes of his panting, where gelid sweat glaciates and burns against the swelter of blood-rich skin. He can not stop. Must not stop.

A pressure in his gut tugs at him on his first stride. Hey bub, say the stitches. Hold up.

Raum presses his palm over his stomach, hisses as he bites his lip. Reluctantly, he lowers his pace to a fast walk, then slowly accelerates and relaxes in a hunt for a jogging pace that won’t rip his stomach. Feeling he has found it, with only a minor strain, he proceeds.

He has called Phoenix in advance to prepare him for the visit. If Raum is lucky, he may arrive to find Phoenix waiting in the courtyard with the panacea in-hand, but if Raum is unlucky, his interest in something so valuable might have rankled Phoenix’s paranoia around thieves. Perhaps the most hopeful thing to wish for is—

Like a punctured bellows, Raum’s abdomen collapses.

Agony as intense as a white-hot knife drops Raum to the stone floor. Though his palms and knees cushion the fall, their support crumples like sticks of paper. Fallen on his side, with wetness spreading around his middle, Raum vomits up thick, bloody chunks. Even the strange thirst that has been haranguing his throat, with its needy demands to suck and to swallow, panics with the knowledge that oh no oh no ohnoohnoohnoohno this is wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG.

With the dim orange glow of the neon strip shadowed behind his back, Raum reaches down to his stomach to assess the damage, pulls back his bandages. His fingers catch the lip of open, flayed skin and trace laggardly down its length. For every inch he finds, the goosebumps down his neck prickle higher. But what truly freezes him is his discovery at the end of the slit: tubes of intestine, half-seeped out of his belly. Carefully, he scoops the mush back in.

One rope of guts lays out, a little more distant than the rest. Raum goes to sweep this strand inside also, but the labour of extending his arm so far is more than he can manage. He reels it in inch by inch, dimly mindful not to shred the slippery flesh on his nails.

He pats his organs steady. Spatters of arterial graffiti cover the wall in the half-light.

A thread, he thinks, picking at the corner of his jacket. He needs to sew it up… put back the bandages…

Patch job he’s done plenty of times, in the Thorns…

A thread…

…he just needs…

…

Wet heat prickles around his eyes. His fingers, slumped on the ground, pinch air.

…

h-he, can’t… reach…

jayden, help

i don’t wanna—

Like the first sign of a tsunami, the surface of Raum’s soul ripples. As the wall’s rorschach twists and blurs in Raum’s fading vision, a seismic tremor in the root of his heart casts out waves, like a spastic up and down on the theramin, that his cells shudder with in time. Before blackness closes on the world completely, and before the strange vibration can even register, the quake hits, and the geyser blows.

Absolute pain wrenches Raum’s consciousness out of the dying murk. His torso clenches inward, outward, his limbs spread, arch in, flail, dip, alongside his screaming as his convulsing muscles yank and pose him like an articulated doll. His head and arms go to the floor; his ass rises into the air. The lips of his mutilated stomach pucker together and knit decisively into a plane of smooth, lean flesh, as though never injured at all.

Desperate times, desperate measures, or so his body has decided. To survive means to push the transformation forward. Of course, it doesn’t stop there.

Like a sculptor fine-tuning his work, or a whore fitting herself into garters, Raum’s thighs tighten, his stomach flattens, his hips slim, his torso rebalances for just that right subtle mix of slight fat and lean muscle. Feathers strain out of his other arm, down his shoulders, out his coccyx, the last of those pinned uncomfortably under his pants as they try to flap up, flap down, fan out. Organs shift. Bones crackle, growing lighter. His feet scrape at the floor as if to run, but the motion changes into kicking off his shoes as talons burst and shred through them.

Raum’s throat and stomach weigh as if forced to chug tubfuls of semen. One of his new stomach muscles pulls a stitch as he retches, violated beyond violated. Cut him open and every muscle, vein, or organ would be frosted with thick, dripping bukkake. But that’s wrong. The profanity isn’t in him; it is him.

He remembers many pairs of broad hands pawing at his waist and rear. Even now his ass remains raised as if hoisted up by these ghosts, and though the sensation of fingers plays on his skin, no force is holding him there, since his muscles are no longer locked. It is simply that, when this body is totally relaxed, this is the kind of position it defaults to. He is actually slumped, right now.

When he tries to move himself down, he finds he can only either roll his hips backward to dredge his imaginary punters deeper inside, or rut forward in accordance with the itching of the fingernails working up his perineum.

“Stop it!" Raum shrieks like a child between whacks. “Don’t! Stop it!"

But the voice that echoes back off the tunnel walls laughs, with cruelly refined satire, staaahp it, don’t staaahp it.

The molesting phantoms fade off his skin and dissolve into his hips. Now when Raum tries to lower his rear in a normal, unsuggestive line, his body answers with shrieks of dysphoria. Instantly, he flinches back up. The compromise he finds is to swoop his hips down and aside, hoisting one leg up to his stomach, the other smoothly extended to frame his crotch.

Minor tweaks of muscle definition and feather alignment continue like tiny aftershocks, each its own rope of cum. Raum sobs into his forearms. As the tingling and vibrations slowly settle, so does the comprehension that much of his body has accepted this new constitution. There is a fifty-fifty shot now, when he regards any inch of his body, of whether it will still feel like burbling tar, incomplete, or just normal.

A thick sheen of sweat glues his shirt to his back as lays there, heaving each breath. The physical exertion of this change has wiped him out even worse than the running. He fishes his tailfeathers out of his pants and pillows his head upon his crossed wings, preening their feathers smooth between his fingers. What he should do is rest and rebuild his energy, so that when this refractory period ends, he’ll be ready to help the next set of changes along.

The sensation of incompletion is honestly more frustrating than any other aspect of this situation, currently. He has a semi and is thinking of jacking it. He already can’t be clean anymore.

Because, when he considers that changing will mean more cumshots, more rapes, that he’ll hate it, and that it’ll feel horrible, the part of him that this excites isn’t the ghoul, which regards such things with an innocent ‘hm? what’s so exciting there?’ disconcern, but him. The human part. The ‘good’ part.

He might actually be more filthy than the ghoul, which is nothing but filth.

That is the kind of thought that makes him want to drown in the bottle. That is how his idiot soul has contorted in some discordant pretence of managing this pain.

In complete honesty, most of Raum’s actions have, in major part, been to escape this pain. That is not to say things like believing in hope, pledging himself to Aquila, or wanting better for Phoenix were fake or ever pretexts, but he would admit a calculated underbelly in that the more time he could spend focused on others, and away from the cruel ethics that had personally injured him, the less time he would have to spend thinking about being in pain.

The ghoul doesn’t feel that pain at all. The only sense Raum gets from it is one of easy peace, curiosity for life, and a slight anticipation to be finished and born, which Raum finds himself sharing too.

Raum flips himself over, tests his legs and hips to let them move how they naturally want, analysing.

His heart screams with horrified disgust, no, no, no, no. His brain observes, cooly, holy crap. Mom couldn’t even do that.

This thing he is turning into might just be his true self, refined into its most powerful form.

No, no, no, no! That isn’t true! It’s disgusting! His heart continues its tantrum. Raum rolls his teary eyes. What is he so goddamn scared of? For all his crying, he likes this. Further, this is, for once, a realistic solution to the problems he has always faced. And it’s like Reyl said. This thing is way more sincere than you. It is way more pure than you. This is the strangler, you are the pillow. Hey, aren’t you tired anyway?

Stop being mean to me! I’m good. Aquila—

At that word, a wad of sun pulses through Raum’s chest, his eyes squint in pleasure, and he thinks one thing: Delicious.

His tongue feathers over his lips. Stunned by this response, Raum reels in silence. Ideas of returning to Ferendaux and seducing Aquila down into a husk flit through the back of his mind, but he quickly advises himself that Aquila will be guarded and this isn’t smart. After barely a moment of consideration, an instinctive kind of agreement comes beneath his mind. Yeah, better not. I’ll find someone else. But wow, wowowowowow. Wowwww.

Glad that’s settled, Raum thinks, as the tent in his pants deflates. No interest at all once the meal’s off the table, huh? Raum lifts up a wing, spreads out the feathers, folds them back in so the primaries hug his arm underneath. Can these things actually fly? They’re sure pretty.

Raum lets the wing slump back to the floor, swishes himself onto his knees.

He’s bored. How long until the changes start up again?

What should he do for now? Nap? Jack off? Well on count one he wants to be conscious while it happens, and on count two he’s weirdly not in the mood…

Aquila’s going to be disappointed, neeners Raum’s heart, returning.

If that’s the only argument I can make, that proves I really do have no self-interest, because I am a whore, Raum thinks, as he eases himself onto his feet. Step by step, he marches down the hall on awkward new footing, laughing.

DUHHH! COWARD! HYPOCRITE! YOU ARE SO DUMB. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITHOUT ME! YOU JUST DIE!

I don’t need to do anything except get so strong nothing can hurt me.

Loser, Raum snorts, accelerating. Counterbalancing his exhaustion, this body is much lighter and quicker than before.

—Heads up, Cleopatra, you are shaking your ass like a master.

Raum’s stride falters, ashamed. But if he just walks, he won’t be quick enough… he needs to run, or he won’t make it…

Despite that knowledge, he does pause again. Every time he thinks about what his body is doing, the disgust is too great to continue. He wants to just scream. He wants to just bawl. Antidote or not, he already is this, why bother. If he’s going to keep stop-starting like this, then he’s not going to make it either.

Raum takes a breath, steps forward again.

Phoenix will come.

Mm, pardon?

Phoenix will come. He heard Raum’s call, got the panacea, and is coming through the tunnels to deliver it personally. However far Raum runs to, in the end, that is where Phoenix will be. He just needs to keep running until he reaches Phoenix. That is all he needs to do.

Oh please come the fuck on. But for how stupid and optimistic of a fantasy this is, it does work to kick Raum back into motion.

And is Phoenix going to fix everything else for you, too? He’s gonna make it so Ma never touched you? So you never fucked those some-hundred nobodies?

One, two, one, two, doesn’t matter. Phoenix will be there.

You want him to see you waggle your nethers around? Like you are now? Traumatise the kid?

One two one two one two one two…

You look like a monster. He’d just put you down.

…one two one two one two one two…

Goddamn it, he won’t even be there!

…one two one two one two one two one,two one,two one,two one,two one,two one,two one,two one,two one,two!

Suit yourself, idiot.

Phoenix will be there.

Time blurs into nothing under that steady mantra of ‘one-two, one-two’. Nothing matters, or even exists, except reaching the end of the present hallway, since, however empty it may look or how far it may be, Phoenix is always right there just out of sight in the next corridor.

In this way, despite his body’s protests, Raum keeps running for hours. His objective progress is also not something he lets himself consider. Such, through unchanging miles and miles of stone, the uniformity of which would break any heart quickly, Raum goes much further than he initially thought himself able.

Along the course of this marathon, the transformation does resume. As it initially had been, the process is gradual enough that Raum is able to, again, not let himself consider it. Still, he cannot help but notice, subconsciously, that the tingling tar sensation has faded, so his new body is done, that his movements of his upper body have shifted to smooth licentiousness too, that even his fatigued panting sounds coital, that a honeyed odour wafts about him, that his saliva is sweeter and thicker, that his innards hunger for only one vital nutrient, that the sole diet he can subsist on now is the energy emitted by a human being during sex…

And that to that end, he’d fuck his victims dry, same way as finishing a milkshake.

If Raum were to regard himself now, he’d see a mix between a harpy and Adonis. His thighs to his head are human, and indeed look like himself, if he had pursued a life of body-sculpting to throw aside the jokes and actually make it as the world’s top model. The rest is avian, winged, clawed, feathered, decorated with a filigree of wandering thorns and red petals.

And if Raum were to think, he would know his time is narrowing. With physical and physiological changes squared away, the only dimension left is the psychological. The fading of his ego will dissolve the determination keeping him on this march, not to say his investment in being cured, or ability to conceive what ‘cure’ means at all. The things he will begin to care about or notice will not be things that humans do, but animals. Habitat. Competitors. Prey. Danger. Vulnerable? Fight this? Run? Ah, warm… For how base and horrifying it is, there are more than just passing prospects of comfort in this simplicity.

The part of Raum that can accept the pain of refusing that comfort is shrinking thinner and thinner. It is like a single sliver of thread in darkness, this one-two one-two mantra, and should he look away from it for even a second, poof. He will not find it again. Or want to. It’s okay, it’s over… the ghoul’s innocent happiness wins.

One-two, one-two.

The smell of char crosses Raum’s nose. It catches his attention enough that he registers more of what he’s thinking than the mantra. His feathers are puffed up, his skin tingles with an instinctive warning, danger, danger. There is something truly massive living here the ghoul does not want to tango with. Could die. Scary. Let’s go some other route… or be very, very careful…

Raum freezes, stunned, as the implication clicks.

These are the tunnels right before the courtyard. He has made it to the Cardinal House.

He actually made it. Raum lets his tired body relax; it gratefully rolls back his shoulders, spreads his legs, and swings aside his hips. After everything, it’s this stupid motion that cracks his will like an ice-pick. God, god, god, god, he hates this, he hates this, he hates this, but he can’t deny it’s as cozy to stand like this as to lie curled up on a sofa… what’s wrong? What’s wrong?

No thinking allowed. One-two. Remember that. Don’t stop here.

Phoenix is actually at the end of the next hall, this time. Just focus on that image. Keep going. Phoenix will be there.

Raum sashays one step forward, two, letting the memory of Phoenix in his living quarters, staring down the hall, waiting for him, blank his mind.

Daylight creeps into the corridor, over Raum’s feet. He turns the corner.

Through the blinding well of light, a shadow shifts. Raum pauses.

Someone really is here, at the end of the corridor.

But it’s not Phoenix, he realises. The petite silhouette unslouches, as it sits on the stairway, to peer into the darkness. Even as his eyes adjust, and the details of scars and tats and her dainty wrists and sharp jaw and slender neck and single keen eye resolve out the shadow, he needs none of these to know who it is. By the little motion of that unslouch alone, he recognises her completely.

It’s Reyl.