Fever Blood

Chapter 103: Foul Machinations

Her fair face, with dead eyes, bulged and ripped as he tore free of her, the way a cicada tears free of its shell. He stood, eight feet of stony skin, eyes on his arms staring in the mirror. It felt nice, the hot air, the steam on his true skin. 

He kicked the skin off his leg, stepping out of the woman as if she was a pair of discarded trousers, and threw her husk to the side, before stepping into the bathtub. Ah, bliss! It was one thing to know luxury, another to truly enjoy its fruits.

The door opened. "Master," Haema Rin said, carrying a large sack over his shoulder. "I come with your change in vestment." He undid the burlap sack, revealing an unremarkable man, unconscious. "Do you wish privacy?" 

"No." Kazalibad pointed at a chair with a soapsuds-covered claw. "Sit. We have matters to discuss." 

His sorcerer sat down, leaning the burlap sack against a washstand. "You wish to know how it is coming?" 

Kazalibad leaned back and enjoyed the water soaking into his muscles, sore from being kept wrapped up in that accursed skin. He didn't relish getting back into one. "On second thought, keep the man for a later change, and cast a veil upon me. I rather like wearing my own skin." 

"Of course." Haema Rin paused. "I will need your assistance with the matter you've been having me seek into." 

"Assistance?" Kazalibad asked. 

"I need the Cydari's to hire a composer. The more mentally unsound, the better." Haema Rin shrugged. "You understand the artistic type. They seek their vision, romanticizing madness as the necessary price." 

"Usually that 'madness' comes from a bottle," Kazalibad said dismissively, "and an inflated ego." 

"Yes, well, I plan to have him off himself," Haema Rin said. "But not until he serves our purpose." 

"And that purpose is?" Kazalibad asked. 

"Write me a viola song." Kazalibad blinked. Haema Rin's hobbies, he knew, included torturing people and torturing Kazalibad with that devil of an instrument. "You remember the name given to the object of your lust, correct?" 

"It's the one thing I've wanted and cannot have," Kazalibad snarled. "My magic gave me immortality. Blood gives me invincibility. And soon, irresistibility." He was incapable of being slain. Soon, he would be incapable of being denied victory. "Dragon magic. Bloodsinging." Kazalibad lifted himself out of the tub and dried off with one of the Cydari's soft linen towels. They would be disgusted by his presence polluting their linens and their washroom, but Kazalibad didn't care for their comforts."Though to call the screams and roars of dragonkind lyrical is a bit of a stretch." He wrapped the towel around his waist, not to conceal anything (for there wasn't anything to conceal), just out of sensibility.

"It is not called singing because of their roars," Haema Rin said. 

"Explain then." 

"It would be easier if I showed you." 

***

The air was too cold. 

Angror stared out into the distance. His body wanted to shiver, or, rather, the weak part of his body. The cold air made the rings pierced through his nose burn, the same way the ones through his lips burned. 

That filthy Red Claw was inside, and Angror could taste that rank halfling freak's pollution in the air. The shamans behind him, more skilled in the art of Soulsplitting than Angror was fit to know. They were whole persons, after all, with purer souls than Angror. All he knew was how to fight the foul abominations this one might summon. The Tuskborn warriors behind them, oblivious to the senses of the abomination's filthy soul.