Kesdaya Astrid – Goddess of Blood, Keeper of Pure Flesh and Guardian of Lifeforce. She was forgotten; doomed to obscurity until a group unsuspecting history students fell into her hands and under her power.
Chapter One: Goddess of Blood
In a damp basement, nine men in dark robes formed a semi-circle facing a sigil scratched into the wooden floorboards. Each of them read slowly from a piece of paper, painstakingly twisting their mouths around the foreign words of a long-forgotten tongue.
The three-story Victorian house they were using was abandoned and dilapidated. It creaked with the wind and leaked with the rain. Its front faced a completely normal street on the edge of town, its neighbours either side replaced by modern buildings. At the back, through, it had a small overgrown yard bordering onto a thick dark forest.
It was commonly rumoured that this particular house was haunted. So it made sense that a cult would choose it as their meeting spot. It also frequently sheltered the delinquent and the desperate, making it quite an active spot considering its legal owner had left it to rot.
When the men had read all the way to the bottom of their pages and the prayer was concluded, pitch-black coiling shadows began to filter up between the splintered floorboards. They billowed upward like a cloud of smoke, choking the light and air out of the room until half of the candles flickered out completely. The rest shrunk low and glowed a subdued crimson.
Many of the cultists held their breath. Those that did breathe found the oxygen in the room was thinner. They unanimously retreated further and further back, until they had disappeared behind heavy curtains that separated the ritual area from the rest of the room. When it reached the ceiling, the darkness stopped its upward wafting and flared out with sudden aggression to take up the remaining space, menacing and bat-like. Several cultists cried out in fear. But finally, it seemed to settle and pulled back into the silhouette of a tall and shapely woman.
Her eyes opened first – white and faintly luminous. Then her features carved themselves out of the darkness. She had a thin smile, and low arching eyebrows. It made her look cruel. Her hair was a long tumble of fiery red and her dress looked like it was made out of the night. Around her neck was a pendant – no, a vial – filled with red liquid that sat over her plush breasts.
This was Kesdaya Astrid – Goddess of Blood, Keeper of Pure Flesh and Guardian of Life-Force. She surveyed her surroundings with growing distaste. It was hardly the standard expected for receiving a deity. Beneath her feet, the summoning symbols of her kin had been written hastily with chalk and animal blood. The prayer they had used to summon her had been slurred as if drunk. And where was her reception party?
Hushed whispers and the echoes of violence found her pointed ears. From behind the curtains, she could sense several heartbeats. All of them were hammering quickly and fearfully, but they were strong. That was at least something.
Just as Kesdaya was beginning to think she might have to call out to them, the curtains parted and three men appeared with their heads bowed and hands outstretched in offering. A cup of blood, a half-decomposed cat wrapped in a towel , and a dagger. Her cheeks flushed with anger and humiliation. How far had she fallen? From entire kingdoms of mortals who once worshipped her day and night? She refused to look at them, instead gazing stonily above their heads.
“Great Goddess.” The centre man spoke. “So we honour you, will you honour us?”
Making them stew in silence was too good for them. It was satisfying to notice their hands shaking and their breath quickening. Finally, she replied:
“Where is my sacrifice? Surely you cannot expect me to accept this slurry of watered down animal blood? Nor that corpse.” Her voice was venom and her eyes flashed with divine anger, causing the three presenters to flinch.
“I’m… so sorry. Your greatness, we… don’t have…” He trailed off.
The centre man fell to his knees, eyes glazed over. He had been the one holding up the cup of animal blood, which clattered to the floor beside him. His skull hit the ground a moment later. Kesdaya ate up the life-force that left him and sighed contentedly. Heavens, she had needed that. A millennia of sleep certainly made a Goddess famished.
“Now,” she repeated, “Where is my sacrifice?”
The other two men – the cat and the knife bearer – dropped their objects and sprinted back behind the curtain. Kesdaya laughed. She had already scented each of them like a bloodhound. There would be no escaping her no matter how far they ran. They must have known this too, because none of them tried to leave the building. Instead, they whispered frantically amongst themselves.
The whispers grew louder as she waited. Eventually she could hear what they were saying: “We’ve got no choice! I’m sorry, man! We’ve got no choice!”
“Bullshit! Let me speak to her. I can…” A loud crack cut the sentence short.
“She’s already mad. She’ll kill us all if we don’t do what she says.”
There was a groan, and shortly after a dragging sound. Two more of the cultists dragged out a third, roughly bound at the wrists and with a cloth stuffed in his mouth. His hood had fallen back to reveal a square caucasian face, cracked rectangular glasses and a brown stubbled jaw. There was blood dripping down his temple from where his fellow cult members had turned on him. How cruel it was to be the runt of the litter.
Kesdaya eyed him up hungrily. Yet something stopped her from feeding on him straight away. Perhaps it was unwillingness to accept offerings from such barbaric and cowardly men. Or perhaps it was something in his expression. Either way, she ordered the rag be removed from his mouth so he could say whatever he had wanted to say.
The human coughed and sputtered as the fabric was ripped away. Then he spat several times on the floor, before looking up in horror.
“Oh gods, Your Crimson Ascendancy!” he gasped, “Please, I meant no disrespect. I’m not spitting at you. Certainly not. Just the taste of that towel. Ugh! It was used to wrap a rotting cat!”
“The very same animal you tried to offer me?” she drawled.
“I- yes. I apologise, My Queen. We have little else to offer. You have my deepest apologies. We should not have called you without a better offering.”
“And now you may pay for that mistake with your life.” The Goddess replied.
“Please, My Queen,” he repeated, “You’ve already taken the life-force of my brother. I beg of you to show us mercy.”
The woman’s brows furrowed into a tight frown, “I am not known for mercy.”
Unfortunately, it seemed that the one they offered in sacrifice was the most eloquently spoken of the acolytes which had summoned her. Furthermore, he had used one of her proper titles; her favourite in fact, for formal occasions: Your Crimson Ascendancy. It felt good to be spoken to with the reverence of the old days.
“Perhaps there’s something else you can ask of us. If you spare my life, I will spend every second thereafter in your service, my queen. Please, I beg.”
He bowed lower. The entire company of humans – nine she had counted – held their breath while waiting for her response.
“You’ve already admitted you have very little to offer.” she countered, “I’ve half a mind to drain you all for the insolence.”
Sweat pricked on the forehead of the sacrifice. He was white as a sheet with terror, along with all his hooded brothers. She raised her arm, prepared to dine on them all in a mammoth feast that would sait her for a few more centuries of slumber.
“Wait!” he shouted, “If you kill us, there’ll be no one left to remember you.”
She paused with her hand held aloft. It was true. Her worshipers were long gone, and knowledge of her reign had all but passed into obscurity. Kesdaya had expected to wither into nothingness before any humans called upon her again. She had been resigned to the fact. Gods rose and fell with the millenia, such that she accepted her own time had come.
It was a stroke of luck then, that these mortals had reconstructed her ancient rites and summoned her from the edge of the abyss just in time. This unspeakable rabble of bastards and cowards were seemingly the only thing Kesdaya had left in the world to live for.
“I’m prepared to be forgotten.” Kesdaya said with dignity, “Are you, puny mortal?”
“No! No, I’m not ready. I want to live. I’ll do anything: worship you. Spread your word. Help you reign again.”
The man was talking sense now.
“What’s your name, human?”
“Derek.” The man signed, hardly able to believe he might have swung this, “Derek Brodder at your service.”
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