"You that have felt his fiery darts, can subscribe to the truth of this, and by fatal experience can tell, how often he has bid you, "curse God and die," and darted into your thoughts a thousand blasphemous suggestions."
Songs:
Remothered Tormented Fathers Soundtrack - Trailer Song
Resident Evil 7 Soundtrack - 15 Out In The Open
He appeared as a shadow just beyond the firelight, hooded and cloaked. His stench proceeded him, sickly sweet rotten flesh invading my nostrils and cloying in my throat. I could hear his breath: ragged and punctuated with low, harsh barks. Beneath the hood, his white eyes watched me. His antlers glowed a deathly orange in the firelight, and I could see the stringy, bloody flesh quivering between the points like old spider webs.
"Blood . . . and bone . . ." His voice echoed in my head. It made my knees weak. "Mmm, yes . . . warm flesh . . . a beating heart." There was a long, low growl. It was both ravenous and lustful. "Mmm, sacrifice."
He rushed forth, and I braced myself for pain. I could see his vortex-like mouth with its endless teeth beneath the folds of his ragged covering and felt certain I glimpsed Hell within it. In a second he passed over the ring of ashes, and breathlessly I began to mutter an incantation. "Caelum mihi corona tua animae-"
He stopped abruptly, a mere six feet from me. The incantation died in my throat as I found myself tipping my head back to look up at him. Long strands of thick saliva clung to the edges of his shroud. His bones clicked and his breathing stilled. He had heard me.
"What is your muttering, little witch?" His voice filled my head. I cringed and grit my teeth. His head slowly turned, his white eyes absorbing the scene: the young saplings hanging from the trees covered in smoldering twine, the ashes on the ground, the ring of blood around me. If he'd had eyelids, they would have narrowed. Instead, I felt his suspicion like needles prickling across my scalp.
"What are these baubles?" he growled. He sniffed harshly at the air. "What is that stench? Burnt things and earthen water . . ." His eyes fell upon the small pot with what was left of the Cauldron's Cap brew within it. When he looked at me again, the air seemed to pulse. His voice, when it came, was a hiss filled with malice.
"What is this blasphemy?"
Something about his presence made my courage dissolve away. I thought that I should pray, but I could muster no words. Darkness was closing in from the edges of my vision like tears in the very fabric of reality. Zibarath was the only thing that was clear in my vision. He was overwhelming, omnipresent, the only thing my eyes could focus upon. The urge to fall to my knees and beg forgiveness nearly made my legs buckle. Resisting the urge made me shake. I was sucking in breath as if through a straw.
"You have defied me, little witch," he said. He was advancing again, his cloak peeling back. My eyes rolled and I struggled to stay upright.
The incantation, I thought desperately. I must finish it . . . I must . . .
"You . . ." My mouth was so dry and my jaw so stiff that I choked. "You . . . do not . . . command me . . ."
The assertion was weak. Pitiful. His laugh filled me, rattling around my skull so that I had to bow my head and close my eyes. I searched within myself for that power I had been building, the surging of fire within my blood. But I was weak. I was tired. So tired . . .
"All of Tastrim will pay for your defiance," he said, looming over me. I was lost in darkness and it was him, only him, there with me. "Every man, woman, and child will suffer. I will drive them to consume one another, to feast on their neighbor's flesh."
I fell to my knees. I could feel the cold of the snow but I could not see it. How had I ever thought I could command him? How dare I even consider that I could control him? Zibarath . . . Master . . .
"You will watch them die," his voice felt like long, heavy pounds from a hammer. I gasped and struggled against pressing my forehead to the ground in submission. "You will smell their blood and hear their screams. And in the end you will still kneel, and answer to me." He laughed again. I was dizzy and sightless, a useless and weak thing.
"We will start with your father."
Air gasped into my lungs. Father . . . my papa . . . he was still out there wandering . . . running. Fighting. Fighting to save his daughter from himself. Fighting against the most insatiable urge the devil could put upon him. I struggled for another breath, forcing the darkness to recede from my vision. I could see the snow, orange in the firelight. I could see the rotten edges of the Shrouded One's cloak. My throat ached and I swallowed hard.
"Not . . . not your girl . . . papa," I muttered. The incantation . . . I had to remember . . .
"On your feet, little witch," Zibarath's voice boomed. "Tonight Tastrim shall be baptized in blood."
I got to my feet. The weight of his eyes on me felt like stones tied around my neck. My own breath echoed in my ears. The power I needed was within me somewhere. I had to find it again. I had to speak although my tongue felt swollen.
I began to whisper. My voice was clumsy, uncertain. I could barely lift my head. I felt long claws stroke along my neck, and up my chin. I stared into the eyes of the demon, and said softly, "Heaven bind thy soul to me."
He jerked his claws away as if burned. His teeth snapped furiously, and he seemed to grow even taller as he loomed over me. "Silence! Keep your blasphemous mouth shut-"
"Two as one shall we ever be." Every word felt like razor blades slicing my tongue. I was struggling not to dissolve into screams. My throat felt as if it were closing. His claws still hovered horrifyingly close to my face. I forced myself to speak, "Master shall you call me-"
Agonizing pain contracted my spine and I crumpled to the ground. I felt myself seizing, my throat closing, my lungs clenched in a vice grip. Zibarath stood over me on all fours, his long boney limbs like spider's legs around me, his beast-like body revealed as his cloak billowed away. His chest was a vile mockery of human ribs contorted and misshapen, onto which gray, rotting flesh clung. Every bone was visible, and like a massive pulsating scar his mouth ran down the middle of his chest. Saliva and pus dripped from the slit and burned through my clothes like acid. I had to go on. Nearly blind with pain, I disregarded my physical body and focused only upon the drowning power within my blood, the burn that made the world glow with colors and energy, that made my fever dreams real.
"Heaven bind thy soul to me, two as one shall we ever be . . . aaahhhh . . ." My eyes rolled back. My head was filled with screams, inhuman cries, and desperate mad ramblings. I felt claws sinking into my skin, my veins were burning. It was the kind of burn that set my heart beating frantically, that fogged my brain with drunken strength. "Master shall you call me! Without protest shall you serve me!"
The demon roared and thrashed. But his legs were tethered into the earth, bound by red threads. At my bidding they tightened and drew him nearer. I could hardly bear the closeness of him. Again I repeated the incantation, my voice gaining strength, "Heaven bind thy soul to me!"
My heart skipped a beat and then fell into an unfamiliar rhythm. Six quick thumps and then a painful pause, again and again. Zibarath was grunting, drawn down closer and closer to me. His form seemed to be dissolving in on itself, his bones cracking.
"Two as one as shall we ever be! Master shall you call me!"
My vision was gone. My world was a cacophony of color and wretched screaming. What was left of my physical being seemed to stretch and swell, like a child's glove with an adult's hand shoved within it. Pain exploded, dulled, and exploded again.
"Without protest shall you serve me!"
I was certain my chest had caved in. I was scrambled and crushed, with no sense of up or down or what was real. I could still hear Zibarath growling except . . . no . . . I was growling. That beastly sound was coming from my own throat. That smell was my own rotting body. My eyes were cold jelly. My nails became claws so quickly that my fingers bled at the cuticles. I heard my ribs snapping into an unnatural shape. My back arched and I thrashed. As I screamed the incantation, it was not only my own voice that spoke. Zibarath spoke out of me.
"Heaven bind thy soul to me! Two as one shall we ever be! Master shall you call me, without protest shall you serve me! So may it be!"
Silent whiteness surrounded me. I could hear nothing, at first. I could not even discern where exactly I was in all that whiteness. I could not discern my fingers, my limbs, my own face. I wanted to struggle, but I had nothing I could struggle with nor against. It was just nothingness.
Slowly, sound returned to my ears. That peculiar thump, thump, thump of my heart. Beneath my own heartbeat there was another, quieter beat. It was irregular, and every time I felt it my breath caught in my throat. Thus did my lungs return to me. The feeling in the rest of my body followed, and suddenly-
My eyes opened. I was lying on my stomach, staring sideways at the ancient tree. The fires I had lit were dying. The clouds overhead had cleared. I lay in silver moonlight, my skin so cold it was numb.
Zibarath was gone.
With uncertain, twitching muscles I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. I could not manage to stand, so instead I crawled. I thought vaguely that I was done, that I should return to Tastrim. Then my stomach lurched.
My belly felt as if something were trying to tear its way out from the inside. My stomach cramped and lurched again: I could feel something in my esophagus, worming its way up. I opened my mouth to vomit, but only choked. Bile spewed across the snow and I choked again. Something was in my throat, stoppering it, wriggling its way out.
My mouth opened and something forced its way forth. Something long, black and grasping. It was a clawed hand . . . and then a blackened rotten arm. In horror I found myself retching uncontrollably as the demon's arm grasped for a hold, trying to force its way out of me. My head pounded and vision flashed as lack of oxygen began to drive me toward unconsciousness. I would choke to death . . .
My numb fingers found the bottle of holy water on my belt. I rolled onto my back as the arm thrashed from my mouth, and uncorked the bottle. I tasted bile again, and could not even manage to swallow around the thing filling my throat. I shoved the bottle against the vile arm, as much into my mouth as I could manage, and felt the cold liquid running into my throat. It burned, and the arm began to thrash. It took everything in me to keep trying to swallow. The arm curled like a dying plant. My stomach convulsed but I held it down. The arm shrunk tighter and tighter and I crawled up, coughing and choking. Finally, a slimy mass like old wet leather vomited up.
I could breathe again, the air making me lightheaded. I crawled, and then collapsed. I lay in the snow and focused only on the filling of my lungs. I watched my fingers spasm with residual adrenaline. I basked in the moonlight's glow, as its light filled me. I looked beyond, at the trees, and realized they no longer moaned.
The forest was cleansed, the earth was still. Zibarath had been bound.