Butcher Briggs ascended a broad muscular chest carved into the side of a mountain. His sharp fingernails bit into the surface, natural handholds were unnecessary for his powerful hands. He climbed between the pectorals and up past the undulating ridges that formed the neck. The face of the carved man, jaw clenched, outstretched arm, broad shoulders, and pronounced biceps, pointed into the void as he sat atop a charging horse. Butcher reached the chin, pulling himself up with one arm into the lips of the carved warrior. A wide opening between two sharp fangs of the mouth allowed him entry inside the giant head. There were easier ways into the Sisters’ palace, but he liked climbing.
The inside of the palace, carved into the hollowed-out monument to Crazy Horse, was richly decorated and furnished. Running fountains sprayed water, dyed red, a dozen feet into the air, out of the carved faces of drowning people. Small puddles formed on dark marble around the fountains. Periodically, women dressed in dirty linens sopped up the water with their own clothing before disappearing down another corridor. As one servant passed, Butcher grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into a dark corner. He pushed her back against the hard stone and placed her wrist to his mouth. His teeth sank into her vein to feed. Used to the treatment, she did not scream. But she proved too soured by past use, even for his taste. Her blood had the flavor of old roadkill and ran slowly, thickly coating his tongue. He withdrew, disappointed. Fresh meat was becoming hard to find.
He walked into the largest chamber carved into the monument’s head. Everyone already stood assembled. The colossal monument’s eye had been blasted open, forming a huge circle. It provided a clear view of the dark gray sky and the grounds below. In the center of the eye, peering outward, stood Perdita, considered the leader of the three Sisters. Her blond hair waved in an invisible breeze. The magic she controlled allowed her to conjure simple effects over her body. She could make her skin dark or light, change her eyes to look like those of a wolf, and rumor had it she could change her shape.
Evadine, one of the darker-haired Sisters, noticed Butcher Briggs enter the room. His hubris and lack of fear were always clear. “He’s here, Perdita,” she said. Her faded blue eyes, framed by long straight hair that ended just above sharp shoulder blades regarded him coldly.
The blonde sister turned towards him, her eyes now stark white, showing black pupils that pulsed like a heart beat.
“You are late, Butcher, I assume you have a good reason,” she said.
“As ever, my reasons are my own,” he replied. He pulled an object from his pocket and dropped a bird at his feet; the messenger the Three sent to him. The bird appeared to be made more of shadow than feathers, scrunched up and thoroughly broken. Butcher never kowtowed to the Three like the others. Combined, they could hurt him, but he was valuable, and dangerous enough that he might take one with him. “I have news. The mouth has opened. A human has entered.”
“Yes, we know,” the final sister said. Unlike the others, her eyes were empty. Hollow voids sat above her cheeks like tunnels a rat burrowed into the ground.
“Merrivale,” Butcher bowed and addressed her. She heard the hardened leather he wore brush against his skin with the movement. She had been the prettiest of the three before she lost her eyes. Butcher had spent time with her. Merrivale enjoyed his underlying cruelty. She appeared to be the softest of the three, but he knew better.
Merrivale, led by a servant, received whispers in her ear to describe what she could not discern with her other senses. “We have our own messengers,” she said. The blind sister pointed towards the wall. A boy, barely fourteen, hung suspended above knee height. His muscles strained under the weight of heavy chains holding him high on the wall. Stains darkened the floor from the previous victim of the Sister’s rituals. Carved small grooves spread below him under his feet, forming a concentric pattern. They were designed to catch blood, channeling it into an urn placed into a hole at the center.
“Release his left arm,” Perdita called. Another servant, clearly soured, his veins shown black through pallid skin, cranked a handle counterclockwise. The boy’s arm fell to his side. He had lost all sensation and could not lift it.
Perdita approached a dais. A dark metallic ball, the size of an orange, sat in a cradle made of cottonwood branches. Sharp spikes protruded from it. She picked it up using her long fingers to avoid the spikes. She held it outstretched before her and strode towards the boy. Her black pupils, mere pinpricks.
“Please don’t hurt me,” the boy whimpered hoarsely, “I can tell you how the Seven hide from you.”
“We are not worried about your weak rebels,” Evadine said. She spoke with a soft, barely noticeable, Greek accent. “We have better uses for you than telling us the location of escaped slaves.”
Perdita placed the spiked ball into his freed hand. He had no strength to hold on to it, but it did not fall from his open fingers. The spikes pulled themselves deeply into his palm and drew his blood. Small drops fell at his feet, into the channels below, but the ball also drank in his blood on its own.
Perdita ran through the ritual like hundreds of times before. But none had ever been as important. “Listen to me, boy, you are of pure spirit. Tell the truth, you are untouched?”
“Yes,” he answered.” I have never been fed upon,” the boy answered without emotion, robbed of his will by the vampiric ball. The Sisters kept him and the rest of the People, locked in a protected enclave, away from others of their kind, but that wasn’t always foolproof. Paleskins, even the most loyal, were always hungry, and decent food became increasingly scarce.
“Repeat after me,” Perdita commanded the boy. “Exactly… and we shall set you free.”
Blood continued dripping from his left hand. His eyes drooped, but he remained conscious. He looked at her mouth as she spoke.
“Elder Snake.” She looked at him. He stared dumbly. “Go on,” she prodded.
“Elder Snake,” he said.
“I summon you in my time of need,” she whispered this into his ear, brushing her lips against his lobes.
“I summon you in my time of need.” He felt her hand lightly on his chest, rubbing him tenderly. Tears formed on his face from the vampiric ball’s stinging spikes as the pain intensified.
“Come from hiding, snake spirit, so I may honor you.” Her hand reached behind his neck; she ran her fingers through his hair.
“Come from hiding, snake spirit, so I may honor you.” The boy’s pain disappeared with her touch. Under her spell, he believed Perdita would save him.
“I sacrifice for you, great Elder Snake,” she pulled her head away to look into his eyes. His tears turned bloody and filled the corners of each eye. She kissed each of them, leaving behind red splotches around each lid.
“Say it,” she whispered to him, guiding his mind with her gaze.
“I sacrifice to you, great Elder Snake.”
His breathing grew shallow until even the blind Merrivale no longer heard it. The vampiric ball fell from his hands and thudded to the floor and an image coalesced from it. A long object squeezed from a tiny hole, like toothpaste through the eye of a needle. It grew thick. Inky blackness formed into dark shiny scales. Two eyes appeared from the center of the mass. It became solid and long. Perdita had successfully summoned the powerful spirit of the Elder Snake. The black snake of hidden things and concealed knowledge. It saw the Sisters, Butcher Briggs, and knew its betrayal immediately. It slithered towards the blasted eye of the giant monument, seeking escape. It knew of the Sisters, mostly by rumor.
Evadine scrambled after the snake. She reached for its tail, catching it with her sharp nails. The snake swung around, sinking black poisonous fangs into her arm, but she did not release her grip. Merrivale, led by her servant, came from behind and caught its flailing, hissing head in her hands. It tried to strike again, but they held it fast. Perdita laughed and its anger at them grew. Her white eyes met the snake’s black ones directly, her pupils now shaped to mimic the snake’s own. It screamed in rage at her. Perdita’s face was only inches away. The snake wanted to strike, but it remained helpless.
“Welcome black Snake, to the Hunting Ground, the spirit world of your people. Where your kind go after they die. Here we are their masters and now we are your master. You know our kind. Your people call us Paleskins. There are none like us in your stories. We are of the old world and we are war, disease and ruin. You have no power over us and I command you,” she taunted.
It stopped struggling. The Elder Snake, held the power of sight and prophecy. Some stories told a tale the snake spirit would bring about the ruin of the People. This was why the Sisters had finally chosen to summon it.
“Your Lady of Light imprisons us here and we wish to be free. After decades, the mouth has opened but we cannot reach the living world alone. Tell us of the one that has entered.”
The snake answered. “Great and terrible, vampires. I know your kind.” It did not talk like a snake in stories with silky, enticing words punctuated by elongated S’s. Its guttural voice spat out each word, spite coating each.
“And the girl who entered?” the blind sister asked. “Is she the one?”
“She comes to my mind only faintly,” the snake said. “She is younger than this used boy here. She walked between worlds.” The black snake swiped at the air with its tongue. It tried to rock its head, but Merrivale’s grip held firm. “She is living,” it finally said. “She has the power to open your cage and let you out.”
These were the words the Sisters had hoped to hear.
“Then she is the one we need,” Evadine said, relief and delight in her voice.
“She will summon our enemy who binds us here against our will. We can destroy her and be free,” Perdita said, more for Butcher’s benefit than her Sisters. He learned only then that this land did not have to be his eternal punishment. The Sisters knew while the dead could summon lesser spirits, only someone alive could conjure the entity powerful enough to set them free.
“Sisters, we must bring the girl here. We must put the pieces on the board. The girl must not know the power she holds until it is too late.”
“Snake,” the white eyed Perdita said, “can you see far? Do we succeed?”
“Yes. All will succeed. She will summon the Lady of Light for you. You will finally touch your enemy.” With that confirmation, the Sisters released let the snake.
It had not expected this and before it could slide away, they stamped their hard heels down on it. Its bones broke under their feet until it no longer moved. The black snake called out as they continued to smash it and they paused. “Another. A boy,” it said through broken jaws. “Alive. Separate. Lost. Chaos.” And with those words, the Elder Snake faded from the world forever.
“Snakes are not to be trusted,” Butcher Briggs said.
“The snake spoke plain until the end. There are always risks,” Perdita said. But the boy worried her. Why would the snake warn them? Butcher spoke wisely. Snakes are not to be trusted. “The boy must be removed.”
“Are you asking, or telling,” Butcher Briggs said.
“Is there a difference?” Merrivale said to him. She reached out to his cheek and brushed it with her fingers. Her skin, hard and unyielding as his own, felt like cold stone.
“Hurry then. A boy with a hidden spirit is no trifle,” Perdita said. The snake said he was chaos. She assumed he was beyond its sight the same way he had entered without them knowing. “Succeed, and we shall have billions of souls to hunt again.” She pointed at the urn embedded in the floor. “For your renewed strength,” she offered, as payment.
Butcher Briggs grabbed the half-filled cup and drank the blood, the sweetest he had in a long time. He walked past the Elder Snake and kicked at its lifeless husk, to be sure it was dead. He wondered how many spirits the Sisters had destroyed. Thousands, he mused and it would not be the last. Not even the last today as he watched more untouched sacrifices being marched in by Paleskins. He made his way out of the blasted eye and climbed down.
The sisters remained and discussed their plan to catch the girl, refining the details. It was a game, and they liked their games.
“Do we have anything else to worry about?” Evadine asked.
“The Hollow King,” Perdita mused, “Could he, or would he, interfere?”
“No, he is broken and wants out as much as we do,” Merrivale said. “He is no threat.” The rest she did not need to recount. They knew the tale well enough.
They removed him from their game long ago, Merrivale delivering the final blow herself. The Hollow King’s last futile act of blinding her had not saved him. She once had beautiful hazel eyes that shone in a prism of green and brown and gold. For his assault on her, she delivered him a fate worse than death.
The Sisters turned to the three sacrifices and began another short ritual.
Halfway down the battered stone of the giant monument, Butcher spotted three shadow birds, the sister’s summoned messengers, flying from above. Each took a different direction. His eyes were keen, but he did not watch them for long. He had a boy to kill so he could escape this hell. He looked forward to the hunt. Though he expected it would prove no challenge. The living were weak and easy prey, no different from the dead.