“No, no, no, no,” Selga chanted, patting at her cousin’s faces in desperation.
The demon was vanquished, they should be celebrating. Instead she was crawling on her knees to put herself between the two of them. “Silas? Bard?” she reached down and shook Silas’ shoulder, frantically pushing the blonde hair that was sticky and caked with gunk out of her way-
Oh god.
She turned and heaved onto the ground, her gut clenching tightly as the realization of what she had touched.
Silas, impossibly tall, strong, and irritating Silas, had a hole in the side of her head. Her eldest cousin wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. She was just lying there…motionless, her heart had already stopped.
“Bard? Bard please!”
If Silas had been the arrogant, restless, always smiling one, Bard had been her opposite.
But even those grim lines on his face were smoothed out. He wasn’t glaring at Silas or rolling his eyes at her; he wasn’t moving.
Selga shook him by the shoulders to no avail, “Goddammit Bard, breathe!” he didn’t show any signs of answering her.
Smack!
Her hand stung from the force of slapping him, but still there was no response. She hung her head, her tears mingling with the blood that was oozing from the cut on her head. Her body ached, burned in several place and she knew some of her hair was singed from the vanquish.
But none of that mattered, nothing mattered anymore.
Her cousins were dead; they were dead like their parents before them.
Selga shook, from her hands to her chest, she was shaking and sobbing and distantly knew she needed to control herself. She needed to breathe, to bloody think and not feel.
But her body wouldn’t obey her commands.
And there was no one to help her. Silas would never again smack her on the back of the head and tell her to deal with it and Bard would never be the one to sit her down and sing her father’s lullaby to stop the panicking.
Breathe, slowly, head between your knees, he would have said.
Moments, or hours later-she couldn’t be sure, she finally stood. Selga ignored the painful throbbing in her skull and took the knife from her belt, slicing her palm in a swift, mindless motion. The slow trickle of blood was accompanied by a stinging pain, but she ignored it.
Meticulously, she drew the summoning circle on the dirty warehouse floor.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear Silas bitching at her about infection and how utterly stupid this plan was, but ignored it.
The spell was a quick one, words in Latin that no demon could refuse.
Her tattoos glowed with power, the lace patterns that began at her shoulder and covered her left arm, had all taken on a golden glow. No doubt her eyes had too.
The ground shook, the building rumbled at its foundations as a black hole opened where the circle was drawn. And with a painful wailing sound, the demon appeared. It looked vaguely like it could have been human once. Maybe hundreds of years ago. All of its limbs had been stretched and nearly all of them looked like they had been pulled from their sockets and left that way. Its eyes were swollen, popping from the sockets, and belly distended as if it had swallowed a few body parts.
Selga swallowed and willed her body to stop trembling.
The more disfigured the Demon, the longer it’s been in hell, Bard’s voice reminded her distantly.
“You summoned me, wretch.”
It wasn’t a question and she forced herself not to tremble at the warped, gravelly tone of the demon.
The blonde scratched at her dirty hair, “Yes.”
The bloated, yellow eyes glanced at the two bodies, and then its mouth spilt into a sick, sadistic grin.
“My soul. Bring them back and you can have it,” luckily her voice didn’t waver. She dared not look at her cousins mangled, broken bodies.
“A-a-ah,” it waved a gnarled, twisted finger. “A life for a soul, witch, that’s the trade.”
“No. Both of them.”
“I don’t make the rules. One life for your soul or you’ll have to vanquish me.”
Selga clenched her jaw so hard she saw stars, bowing her head. “I won’t choose between them,” her voice was barely a whisper, but even she heard the brokenness in her tone.
“Choose, girl.”
Her hand twitched, barely a movement, and certainly not a decision.
It cackled maniacally as she screamed in disagreement.
She hadn’t chosen! She would never choose between her family-
“So be it.”
And it was gone, in a burst of flames and brimstone.
Bard sat up; he was gasping and clawing at where the holes in his chest had been.
Silas never woke.
@determamfidd
THIS IS YOUR DOING, YOU FED THE BUNNY, HAVE SOME ANGST ON HOW SELGA SOLD HER SOUL AND WHY SHE ENDED UP IN HELL.
Is there a scene where Merilin and Selga first met? Yup.
But I’m not writing in order it would seem. Hopefully Selga is in character, I tried to keep her as true as possible. Silas is completely mine, I needed another cousin to create a ‘Power of Three’ dynamic.
nnnnyaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhh, oh my god, oh my crud, AUGH SELGA
Aw Yiss 