85th Bloodbath

When the world stops in silence, there is blood.

A red filter coats the graveyard.

Iron fills her mouth.

A rush of inner tides throbs in her ear drums.

Caught in the venous sea, Helle shudders. The slimy, cold thing adhered to her organs begins to climb up her spine, one vertebra at a time. It is that living thing, the demon which possesses her, that slaps her lungs awake, washes clear her eyes and quiets her eardrums.

She stands, feet and a lifetime apart from Zenia, trying to breathe for both of them.

"Wouldja look at that," Will says, smiling, and Helle begins to wonder if he is also possessed. "Maybe y'are a witch after all, Helle. What didja do, hex her?"

Another slimy slap, this time forcing her jaw into motion. "I did." She intends for it to be a question. It is a wonder, a curse, an impossibility. She was nowhere near Zenia Siella, 4. But the words come out hard, not confident, but resigned.

I did.

Another gush of blood sluices into her mouth.

She makes the mistake of reaching up with her left arm to staunch, her right arm dead weight on the release.

"HELLE!"

"Fucking ow," she curses, the pain obliterating everything else, even the icy coil at the nape of her neck. Helle gathers up her arm awkwardly, following her allies. It sets off every alarm bell in her head to approach the mausoleum; no good can come of ransacking consecrated ground. But the throbbing in her arm and nose keeps her mouth firmly shut. "I don't know what the fuck you just did, babygirl, but do it a few more times, okay?"

Helle wheezes through the pain and conjurs up a genuine smile.

"Want this, Ms. Witch? If you ask nicely, I'll help you apply it to that nose of yours."

Helle stares at the gift from the Gamemakers, or whoever occupies the tomb. She shuffles closer to Terra, bends slightly at the hips to sniff the container. Only then does she sort of nudge it from Terra's fingers with her good elbow, letting it come to rest against her ribcage. "Yes," she manages, her smile blunted by pain. The exhaustion is coming on quickly. Even having never been so mangled before, Helle knows that she has only minutes before she passes out.

A body can only take so much.

Even one housing a demon.

But when JJ - she says a little prayer to the Triple Goddess that he's still alive - asks, "what was her name again?"

Helle finds the strength to say, "Z. E. N. I. A." And then sags against Terra.

As they flee the graveyard, the drip drip from her nose leaves a trail of blood in their wake, so that price for the hexing of Zenia Siella need only follow along.

[hellemine cauchemar flees the 85th bloodbath.]