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Description
“Oh, Great Lord of the Underworld, Nameless Prince of Hell, Master of all Darkness, Bringer of Despair, Father of Death,” the High Priest raised his arms high and let his powerful voice carry throughout the small stone chamber to each of the dark robed faithful gathered below him. “Hear your children and answer our plea.” The fire of the pit created the only light in the room. The High Priest was sweating beneath his robe. His hood hid most of his face in shadows, so no one noticed when he surreptitiously pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Send us the Hated One, the Anointed One to do your work on earth and pave the way for your coming.”

The words sounded hollow even to his own ears. Around the fire pit, the faithful shifted restlessly. The High Priest sighed and gestured impatiently behind him. A few devotees brought the girl forward, bound, gagged, blindfolded, and heavily medicated. He wasn’t sure where they got her, but then again he didn’t know where they got any of the others, either. He didn’t even know if she was really a virgin or not, and, honestly, didn’t care. He just wanted to get this over with.

“Please accept this humble offering as a symbol of our faith in you.” He drew the ceremonial dagger from his sleeve as the devotees brought the girl to stand in front of him.

“David?” she slurred sleepily. Her pupils took up all of her eyes and a small stream of drool trickled from the corner of her mouth.

“Yes, that’s right,” the High Priest murmured absently as he carefully lifted her chin with the tip of one finger. “Now, close your eyes and hold your head right here….”

“Ok, David,” she said agreeably. “After this… will you take me home? I don’t feel so good.”

“Sure thing, doll,” he answered, and then he carefully slit her throat. He’d done this before and he didn’t even get blood on his robes as he easily pushed her back and into the fire pit.

The flames roared up in response to the fuel they’d coated her dress with and for a solid minute, every eye in the congregation was fixed on the fire. The High Priest wondered cynically what they all thought would happen. That the Hated One would just simply rise, spat out by the fire to do their bidding just because they’d asked nicely? But even he held his breath.

When the flames died down, he sighed bitterly and took a black cloth from his robes to clean off the dagger with. “Next week,” he said blandly, “is the annual bake sale. Please remember to keep Marvolo Graves in your castings. Hell take all of you, and may you go with the power of our almighty dark lord.”

He stood on the dais with the devotees and watched the congregation filed out of the temple. None of them were foolish to speak very loudly, there were devotees all over the place, after all. But The High Priest still heard them.

“I don’t know. It all seems so… showy these days.”

“They’ve been summoning for the Hated One since my grandmother’s time.”

“I think it’s just a gimmick to keep people coming.”

“Shh! That one’s right there!”

The High Priest tightened his grip on the ceremonial dagger. Maybe the Dark Lord would prefer an entire congregation of Dark Children over the parade of drugged up “virgins” they’d been sending his way.

To his left, one of the devotees coughed quietly, distracting him from his thoughts of genocide. “It was a good sermon, sir,” he said softly.

The High Priest sneered. “Shut up, Morris.” He sighed and shook his head as he turned and slipped out the door behind the alter. They followed behind him, faithful little sheep. “We are losing the flock,” he sighed and pushed his hood back.

Beneath the cowl, the High Priest was a rather plain looking man with dusty brown hair and a nondescript face. His large rimmed glasses slipped down his nose again and he impatiently pushed them back up his slightly crooked nose. He really didn’t understand why the ceremonial robes had to be so damned thick. He was standing right next to a really big, really hot fire for two hours twice a week after all.

He shoved open the door to his office and struggled out of the confining garment. Beneath he wore a simple button up shirt and slacks. As he collapsed into his chair with a sigh, one of the devotees put a raspberry smoothie in his hand.

He sipped contemplatively while the two devotees waited awkwardly by the door. When the cup was half empty, he set it carefully down on the desk in front of him and gave it a precise quarter turn to the right so the logo was facing outward. “Something,” he said quietly, “is wrong.”

The devotees glanced at each other nervously. “…Sir?”

“Something is wrong!” he hissed, and he restlessly jumped up and stalked over to the bookcase. He snatched books off the shelf and tossed them on the desk. The devotees winced. Some of those tombs were over seven hundred years old.

“Everything I’ve read—everything!—says that the Hated One was successfully called five hundred years ago. That is the date all the text point to as the appointed dooms day. He should be here already. So where the fuck is he?” He leafed through another text and impatiently threw it away from him. It thudded hard against the fall wall and released a small cloud of vile black dust before falling uselessly to the floor.

“But, sir,” one of the devotees began hesitantly after a moment. “That’s… that’s just not possible, sir. I mean… if the Hated One has already been summoned from the underworld then….” A nervous chuckle. “Well, this would be the Kingdom of Hell already.”

The High Priest gave him a cold look. “Don’t you think I know that, you buffoon?” If this pathetic world was already the Kingdom of Hell then he would already be the Supreme Ruler instead of just the High Priest of a nearly defunct religion. The entire world would be doing his bidding instead of just these morons here at the temple. The Dark Children would be the all powerful ruling class who kept the world in their iron fists instead of a pack of nonbelievers and sheep who only came every week out of habit (and a healthy fear of becoming one of the sacrifices). Everyone else would be their captive slaves.

Tantrum exhausted, the High Priest collapsed back into his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his face as he thought back through everything he had read. The Hated One was called to this world five hundred years ago—almost to the day. A few more contemporary books on the subject conjectured that the High Priestess at the time had been a little too eager and summoned him into a body that was too young, and so the Cleansing of the world through hellfire had needed to wait until he was old enough.

That was a terrifying thought in and of itself. The Hated One a mere child? The High Priest shuddered a little.

But after that… nothing. All the texts said that (for whatever reason) the Cleansing had been put off for a short while, but then it just never happened. All mention of the Hated One dropped out of the church records. If the High Priest didn’t know any better, he might suspect a cover up.

His muddy brown eyes narrowed and he stroked his chin in thought. Was it possible that the Hated One had been somehow killed before the job could be done? The Holy Order had a counter prophecy (they always did, the do-gooding bastards) that foretold of a Knight ordained by God killing the Hated One at the last hour with a strike from his holy weapon…. But thinking that could possibly be true was straying awfully close to blasphemy.

“Perhaps there’s something wrong with the ceremony, my lord,” one of the devotees said, trying to be helpful. “You know how things can be lost in translation sometimes. I think we just need to get back to basics, figure out the right way to be doing things, the way they did it back in the day. Then, perhaps, the Dark Lord may decide to answer us.”

“Indeed,” the High Priest murmured absently. He stood up and began straightening the books he’d thrown on his desk. He’d already read through these a million times. Time to look somewhere else.

To the left of his desk was a small wardrobe and he opened it and began changing clothes. He removed his priestly garb and put on street clothes, a black t-shirt and jeans with a long trench coat over it. He sighed at his reflection. He looked like a pimply college student pretending to be a vampire because he thought it might help him finally have sex. It was utterly disturbing how well the look suited his purpose.

“I’m going out,” he said blandly to the devotees. “Stay here and watch the church. If I’m not back by Thursday’s mass, Morris, you’re in charge of running it.”

“If you’re not back, sir?” questioned monkey number one.

“Where are you going, sir?” asked monkey number two.

The High Priest smiled a bit. “Getting back to basics,” he answered, then straightened the collar of his coat and stepped out.

Ave Augustine was the youngest High Priest in the history of the Dark Children. The proudest day of his life had been when he killed his mentor with poison and took his place, and he like to think that old Chester was a little proud of him, too, as he roasted in Hell and cursed Ave’s name. He’d come from a rather typical family, but his mother’s faith in the Dark Lord had been absolute. So absolute that she’d taken to sacrificing her own children in the kitchen stove, but Ave, who had inherited her absolute faith, killed her for doing it wrong in sacrificing his younger sisters. He wouldn’t have really minded being a sacrifice, he just hated that she was so sloppy.

Left orphaned (he’d killed his father, too, mostly just for fun) at the tender age of fifteen, Ave had made his way to the church and the rest, as they say, is history. It was easy for him to climb the ranks, but bitterly disappointing to find that very few shared his all consuming blind faith in hell. It was then that he began looking into the Hated One. The world desperately needed to be Cleansed, even and especially, it seemed, the Church of the Dark Children.

Before leaving the church, Ave stopped, on a whim, at the records room. After a bit of searching (and growling at the stupid devotee who tried to help him) he found what he was looking for. Five hundred years ago, the High Priestess had been a woman by the name of Kareen. She’d been a prostitute before taking up the cloth and dagger, and a very successful one at that. Never married but… she had a son. That was strange. Usually the High Priests killed all familial attachments. Especially children. While Priests were by no means celibate, connections like that were… sloppy. And distracting. There was something about children that drove many a parent down the dangerous path of good.

Frowning over this oddity, Ave looked for records on the boy but found none. Well. Perhaps she’d ended up killing the kid after all. Ave put up the records and continued on his way.

He was unwilling to accept that the Hated One had been killed, or that he was doing the ceremony wrong. Nothing in the church had changed in a millennium; change was healthy and should therefore be avoided. The answer lay somewhere else.

~*~

Deep in the heart of the city, a blond man named Cynric grimaced in his sleep and tightened his usually lax hold on the woman by his side. Chase sighed in response and curled closer to him without waking up.

‘Let us out!’ a cacophony of voices in his head screeched in unison. 'The Children call us! We must rip! We must burn! We must tear this world asunder for our lord! We must—!'

With a groan, Cynric slammed the metaphorical lid down on them. ‘Yeah, yeah. Shut up.’ Effectively torn from sleep, he grudgingly opened his eyes and was greeted with a blast of cheery sunlight. He growled.

“Everything ok, boss?” Chase asked quietly, and Cynric ran a light hand down her spine. He hadn’t meant to wake her.

“My head is killing me,” he muttered to her.

She kissed his jaw. “Go shave,” she ordered, already detangling herself from his embrace. “I’ll put the coffee on.”

Description
“Oh, Great Lord of the Underworld, Nameless Prince of Hell, Master of all Darkness, Bringer of Despair, Father of Death,” the High Priest raised his arms high and let his powerful voice carry throughout the small stone chamber to each of the dark robed faithful gathered below him. “Hear your children and answer our plea.” The fire of the pit created the only light in the room. The High Priest was sweating beneath his robe. His hood hid most of his face in shadows, so no one noticed when he surreptitiously pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Send us the Hated One, the Anointed One to do your work on earth and pave the way for your coming.”

The words sounded hollow even to his own ears. Around the fire pit, the faithful shifted restlessly. The High Priest sighed and gestured impatiently behind him. A few devotees brought the girl forward, bound, gagged, blindfolded, and heavily medicated. He wasn’t sure where they got her, but then again he didn’t know where they got any of the others, either. He didn’t even know if she was really a virgin or not, and, honestly, didn’t care. He just wanted to get this over with.

“Please accept this humble offering as a symbol of our faith in you.” He drew the ceremonial dagger from his sleeve as the devotees brought the girl to stand in front of him.

“David?” she slurred sleepily. Her pupils took up all of her eyes and a small stream of drool trickled from the corner of her mouth.

“Yes, that’s right,” the High Priest murmured absently as he carefully lifted her chin with the tip of one finger. “Now, close your eyes and hold your head right here….”

“Ok, David,” she said agreeably. “After this… will you take me home? I don’t feel so good.”

“Sure thing, doll,” he answered, and then he carefully slit her throat. He’d done this before and he didn’t even get blood on his robes as he easily pushed her back and into the fire pit.

The flames roared up in response to the fuel they’d coated her dress with and for a solid minute, every eye in the congregation was fixed on the fire. The High Priest wondered cynically what they all thought would happen. That the Hated One would just simply rise, spat out by the fire to do their bidding just because they’d asked nicely? But even he held his breath.

When the flames died down, he sighed bitterly and took a black cloth from his robes to clean off the dagger with. “Next week,” he said blandly, “is the annual bake sale. Please remember to keep Marvolo Graves in your castings. Hell take all of you, and may you go with the power of our almighty dark lord.”

He stood on the dais with the devotees and watched the congregation filed out of the temple. None of them were foolish to speak very loudly, there were devotees all over the place, after all. But The High Priest still heard them.

“I don’t know. It all seems so… showy these days.”

“They’ve been summoning for the Hated One since my grandmother’s time.”

“I think it’s just a gimmick to keep people coming.”

“Shh! That one’s right there!”

The High Priest tightened his grip on the ceremonial dagger. Maybe the Dark Lord would prefer an entire congregation of Dark Children over the parade of drugged up “virgins” they’d been sending his way.

To his left, one of the devotees coughed quietly, distracting him from his thoughts of genocide. “It was a good sermon, sir,” he said softly.

The High Priest sneered. “Shut up, Morris.” He sighed and shook his head as he turned and slipped out the door behind the alter. They followed behind him, faithful little sheep. “We are losing the flock,” he sighed and pushed his hood back.

Beneath the cowl, the High Priest was a rather plain looking man with dusty brown hair and a nondescript face. His large rimmed glasses slipped down his nose again and he impatiently pushed them back up his slightly crooked nose. He really didn’t understand why the ceremonial robes had to be so damned thick. He was standing right next to a really big, really hot fire for two hours twice a week after all.

He shoved open the door to his office and struggled out of the confining garment. Beneath he wore a simple button up shirt and slacks. As he collapsed into his chair with a sigh, one of the devotees put a raspberry smoothie in his hand.

He sipped contemplatively while the two devotees waited awkwardly by the door. When the cup was half empty, he set it carefully down on the desk in front of him and gave it a precise quarter turn to the right so the logo was facing outward. “Something,” he said quietly, “is wrong.”

The devotees glanced at each other nervously. “…Sir?”

“Something is wrong!” he hissed, and he restlessly jumped up and stalked over to the bookcase. He snatched books off the shelf and tossed them on the desk. The devotees winced. Some of those tombs were over seven hundred years old.

“Everything I’ve read—everything!—says that the Hated One was successfully called five hundred years ago. That is the date all the text point to as the appointed dooms day. He should be here already. So where the fuck is he?” He leafed through another text and impatiently threw it away from him. It thudded hard against the fall wall and released a small cloud of vile black dust before falling uselessly to the floor.

“But, sir,” one of the devotees began hesitantly after a moment. “That’s… that’s just not possible, sir. I mean… if the Hated One has already been summoned from the underworld then….” A nervous chuckle. “Well, this would be the Kingdom of Hell already.”

The High Priest gave him a cold look. “Don’t you think I know that, you buffoon?” If this pathetic world was already the Kingdom of Hell then he would already be the Supreme Ruler instead of just the High Priest of a nearly defunct religion. The entire world would be doing his bidding instead of just these morons here at the temple. The Dark Children would be the all powerful ruling class who kept the world in their iron fists instead of a pack of nonbelievers and sheep who only came every week out of habit (and a healthy fear of becoming one of the sacrifices). Everyone else would be their captive slaves.

Tantrum exhausted, the High Priest collapsed back into his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his face as he thought back through everything he had read. The Hated One was called to this world five hundred years ago—almost to the day. A few more contemporary books on the subject conjectured that the High Priestess at the time had been a little too eager and summoned him into a body that was too young, and so the Cleansing of the world through hellfire had needed to wait until he was old enough.

That was a terrifying thought in and of itself. The Hated One a mere child? The High Priest shuddered a little.

But after that… nothing. All the texts said that (for whatever reason) the Cleansing had been put off for a short while, but then it just never happened. All mention of the Hated One dropped out of the church records. If the High Priest didn’t know any better, he might suspect a cover up.

His muddy brown eyes narrowed and he stroked his chin in thought. Was it possible that the Hated One had been somehow killed before the job could be done? The Holy Order had a counter prophecy (they always did, the do-gooding bastards) that foretold of a Knight ordained by God killing the Hated One at the last hour with a strike from his holy weapon…. But thinking that could possibly be true was straying awfully close to blasphemy.

“Perhaps there’s something wrong with the ceremony, my lord,” one of the devotees said, trying to be helpful. “You know how things can be lost in translation sometimes. I think we just need to get back to basics, figure out the right way to be doing things, the way they did it back in the day. Then, perhaps, the Dark Lord may decide to answer us.”

“Indeed,” the High Priest murmured absently. He stood up and began straightening the books he’d thrown on his desk. He’d already read through these a million times. Time to look somewhere else.

To the left of his desk was a small wardrobe and he opened it and began changing clothes. He removed his priestly garb and put on street clothes, a black t-shirt and jeans with a long trench coat over it. He sighed at his reflection. He looked like a pimply college student pretending to be a vampire because he thought it might help him finally have sex. It was utterly disturbing how well the look suited his purpose.

“I’m going out,” he said blandly to the devotees. “Stay here and watch the church. If I’m not back by Thursday’s mass, Morris, you’re in charge of running it.”

“If you’re not back, sir?” questioned monkey number one.

“Where are you going, sir?” asked monkey number two.

The High Priest smiled a bit. “Getting back to basics,” he answered, then straightened the collar of his coat and stepped out.

Ave Augustine was the youngest High Priest in the history of the Dark Children. The proudest day of his life had been when he killed his mentor with poison and took his place, and he like to think that old Chester was a little proud of him, too, as he roasted in Hell and cursed Ave’s name. He’d come from a rather typical family, but his mother’s faith in the Dark Lord had been absolute. So absolute that she’d taken to sacrificing her own children in the kitchen stove, but Ave, who had inherited her absolute faith, killed her for doing it wrong in sacrificing his younger sisters. He wouldn’t have really minded being a sacrifice, he just hated that she was so sloppy.

Left orphaned (he’d killed his father, too, mostly just for fun) at the tender age of fifteen, Ave had made his way to the church and the rest, as they say, is history. It was easy for him to climb the ranks, but bitterly disappointing to find that very few shared his all consuming blind faith in hell. It was then that he began looking into the Hated One. The world desperately needed to be Cleansed, even and especially, it seemed, the Church of the Dark Children.

Before leaving the church, Ave stopped, on a whim, at the records room. After a bit of searching (and growling at the stupid devotee who tried to help him) he found what he was looking for. Five hundred years ago, the High Priestess had been a woman by the name of Kareen. She’d been a prostitute before taking up the cloth and dagger, and a very successful one at that. Never married but… she had a son. That was strange. Usually the High Priests killed all familial attachments. Especially children. While Priests were by no means celibate, connections like that were… sloppy. And distracting. There was something about children that drove many a parent down the dangerous path of good.

Frowning over this oddity, Ave looked for records on the boy but found none. Well. Perhaps she’d ended up killing the kid after all. Ave put up the records and continued on his way.

He was unwilling to accept that the Hated One had been killed, or that he was doing the ceremony wrong. Nothing in the church had changed in a millennium; change was healthy and should therefore be avoided. The answer lay somewhere else.

~*~

Deep in the heart of the city, a blond man named Cynric grimaced in his sleep and tightened his usually lax hold on the woman by his side. Chase sighed in response and curled closer to him without waking up.

‘Let us out!’ a cacophony of voices in his head screeched in unison. 'The Children call us! We must rip! We must burn! We must tear this world asunder for our lord! We must—!'

With a groan, Cynric slammed the metaphorical lid down on them. ‘Yeah, yeah. Shut up.’ Effectively torn from sleep, he grudgingly opened his eyes and was greeted with a blast of cheery sunlight. He growled.

“Everything ok, boss?” Chase asked quietly, and Cynric ran a light hand down her spine. He hadn’t meant to wake her.

“My head is killing me,” he muttered to her.

She kissed his jaw. “Go shave,” she ordered, already detangling herself from his embrace. “I’ll put the coffee on.”