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Some things were worth the wait and seeing his top Bloodwitch (and if he was honest with himself, his biggest rival) throw a tantrum because she had been proven wrong was something Rakdos had hoped to enjoy for quite some time. Judith nearly incandescent with rage as she strutted into his chambers, no moderation of her tone and occasionally joined in by her student Exava with complaints, accusations and a rather large ogre, clearly hoping his shift would end soon, holding a sack. Said sack was tossed in his direction, and Rakdos did not imagine the snarl from within it when it hit the ground.
“You found one then.” He stated, trying to get her to reach her point, shifting his bulk and resting a thorny chin in the palm of his hand as he looked down at the woman shaking with rage in front of him.
“Found one?! Found?!! One?!!!” The stone around them rang with each clipped syllable, each stomped pin-heel. Judith had been a singer before serving him directly and could still shatter glass. “I had to pay for it. Me! They had the gall to ask me for payment for this stupid little experiment of yours. Filthy little mudfuckers and purse ripping beasts, slime! Always slipping through fingers so they don’t do us all a favour and die-”
Seeing if one of the results could stay alive was hardly an 'experiment', youngsters were treated harshly in this city and he didn't like that. Rakdos glanced down at the sack. Judith had gotten into the swing of things now in this elaborate story of how they had tracked down another of the strange horned children that had been popping up since a disastrous high-class party up in Precinct 1, ten years prior. A group of people with too much money and few brain cells decided to summon a blasted devil - Shimmerwhistle, a right little scumbag - to the plane and attempt to broker some contracts for possibly more wealth and even fewer braincells, not at all considering the consequences. And far be it for Rakdos to comment on consequences - chaos was his brand, but some lines couldn’t be crossed.
Judith had now set the scene and was now speaking of the struggle with the Guildless folk she had had to battle, there were arms being lopped off, someone was beheaded, it was all very dramatic, especially with Exava joining in. The cacklers that normally lurked around Rakdos’ lair watched with interest, but did not join in.
He extended a long taloned finger, catching the fabric and giving it a slight pull to see if the sack made a noise, or moved again. For all Ravnica’s populace, there was always an unknown with new things, new people, and purges would then follow, starting at his door and then trailing down through the Golgari, and the Gruul, and the Guildless when those with power decided that some folk were too different. Like the children with horns, reported by the Golgari, and a few fringe Simic medics. Then the Guildless began to ask questions. And well, after an offer of money…and a few false alarms, perhaps…
Rakdos was rewarded by nudging at the sack again with a twitch, and then pressure as the shape within pulled on the fibres against his sharpened nails, tearing a hole. The demon blinked. Alive, and thinking, it seemed.
He still listened to Judith's angry ranting – she was off in her own little world now, and he caught bits and pieces of (legitimate) concerns about the uprising of Guildless gangs, and territories, with the less legitimate concerns about respect for the Cult itself, and why in the world the Cult cared about the health of orphaned children, horns or not. Out of the corner of his eye he now noticed that Exava was looking between him, and her, possibly realizing that Judith no longer had Rakdos’ full attention. She'd put her forward for the next Blooding, he expected. He couldn’t say no to a new Blood Witch either, even if it meant trouble later on…there was chaos and then there was…Exava.
But that was a future issue. His attention was needed in the now, and the tear was very dark, but his keen eyesight revealed the tiniest of movements, and then a dirty face with unkempt hair. Rarely did anyone look Rakdos in the eye - they were too afraid.
Grey eyes locked onto his, and all Rakdos saw was fury.
The demon lord shifted his gaze to watch Judith spin on her heel and walk the other side of the pit, the rant shifting to the growing unrest of Cult groups further out and how it was more important that this search for horned children stop, and-
Sudden bright, pain. Pain he was not expecting.
The webbing between forefinger and thumb now had an attachment.
Eyes widening, he carefully raised his hand.
The child wasn't human. Not completely. He saw pointed ears that twitched like a demon's, a tail without a tuft, or an arrow that lashed like a cat’s. And poking out from the unruly hair – either grey, or white, or a very pale blond he couldn't quite tell with the warm glow of the lava around them – were a pair of little black horns.
Judith still wasn't paying attention. Lurking around her, the cacklers however were, and most had either covered their eyes or their mouths. One had found a scorecard and had given a 9 for this audacious act.
He sat back, watched the child tighten its jaw, hands scrabbling at his skin to gain purchase. With a grunt, he reached out and pulled one of the lanterns closer to examine it, noting that those grey eyes followed his every move where it could see. Even when he dangled it over the lava, the grip remained.
Fascinating. And painful.
At some point the little teeth might work their way through to give him a proper nip at this rate and break skin – such viciousness! Such spite!
“O Defiler?”
Rakdos didn't stir. Just kept looking.
He felt the surge of mana in the air and caught the fireball in his free hand as Judith registered what was going on and tried to destroy the creature.
“I did say I wanted anyone you found alive, Jude.” He remarked calmly.
She spluttered angrily at the shortening of her name. “It is a disgrace!”
“As are we.” Rakdos flipped his hand over so the being was in the palm of his hand. Like an animal it spat out something and was on all fours, crouching in rags and watching him, eyes darting to take in any other motion that might reveal where an attack was coming from. Possibly female? The fist shook a bit as she cleared her mouth, spat again as she made a face of disgust at the taste. “...I think I might keep her.”
“But you can't!”
“Why not?” She stared at him, mouth opening and closing but nothing coming out. Rakdos shrugged and continued. “What's going to happen? The Azorius knock down our doors? The Boros drag us all out and beat us to within an inch of mortality? They do that already, and for less transgressions.” In the cage of his hands, the child raged, but not mindlessly – she was trying to escape. Her heart fluttered against his skin like a bird's wings, desperate to be free. “We did not allow Shimmerwhistle to remain in this world for long. That little shitstack snuck through our wards during a rogue summoning and we dealt with him when he decided he was bored with the toffs and shook off their restraints. Whoever made deals – that's the rest of Ravnica's problem. But the..." He couldn't help but show a fang in disgust. "...byproducts...”
“It's a DEVIL.”
“If she is a devil, she would have done something more than simply biting me, don’t be stupid. And devils aren't born. You know this. AH! She is biting me again. Such spirit.”
Another fireball was brewing; he could feel it. Judith was baring her teeth in a feral grin that could also be a snarl. “It needs to die.”
“No.” He raised his voice just a bit, and the lair twitched at his words. Judith did not cower – he didn't expect her to. He'd chosen her for her bravery, and her cruelty. She had always been a risk and he wasn’t quite sure what he’d been expecting when this sorry task began. “The outcomes of the contract will be wild magic, bad luck and a slow destruction of the soul...a handful of souls that made the deal in the first place. But one born from the contract is rather rare.” He rolled the horned child in his palms and watched her react, balling herself and rolling with the movement with the kind of practiced ease that spoke of her life as a thief (if Judith’s story had a ring of truth to it - the Averroes Hands took in children and trained them up didn’t they?). Roll, to her hands and feet. Roll, to her hands and feet. Roll-stop. Nails. Sharp. He fought very hard not to smile as her tail lashed once more, her little ears twitched back and her eyes narrowed. Rakdos peered a bit closer, only just seeing the little flex of muscles in her legs, the twitch of her shoulders in the rags she was dressed in just a bit too late, as she launched herself at his face.
Their horns clattered. Hers were tiny, but Rakdos was delighted at her furiousness, her processing of what she was doing, how she moved when she realized he was too large for her to make eye-contact.
This made him chuckle. Somewhere very deep from his chest and very unusual because Judith at this point had lobbed another fireball at him and was staring at the spectacle.
Growing shriller at each word: “O Defiler, Bringer of the Rough Music, Blood-Spiller and Bone-Singer...What are you doing.”
“Observing her...I believe she's considering gauging out my eye.”
The child's chest was heaving with exertion. Rakdos held her steady, felt those bare feet, toes digging into the palm of his hand, her whole weight was behind this. But then she was free, pulling herself back and now hauling herself, yes – at his eye! He moved his hand away just at the last moment, and she twisted in air like a cat, digging back into his skin. Before he could stop her she'd pulled herself onto his pinkie finger, and with another tail lash, viciously pinched at him and then – again with the eye-contact, another bite!
“This is a dreadful beast, really, it should be dropped into the pit-” Exava piped up.
Almost conversational, the ogre who had watched all of this with a mixture of terror and morbid curiousity: “I kinda want to see what she does against the Azorius-” His words were silenced when Exava punched him in the stomach, shoulders hunching and flinching away from her.
Judith, the clip of her heeled boots echoing in the chamber as she stomped towards the edge of his pit, the fires around her lighting her in the most unpleasant of ways. “You asked for me to find these horned children, they are trouble, they should be-”
“Alive.” Rakdos replied, dryly. “And she is the only one you've found. One, Jude.”
Judith fell silent, chewing her lip, fingers drawn into fists with nails digging deep. He could smell her blood from here. “This is a mistake.”
“Yes. But it will be my mistake.”
“It's against the Guildpact.”
“Via a technicality.” Oof. The girl was pulling very hard now. When this didn't work, she pulled back and drove her horns into his palm, and Rakdos sucked air between his teeth. That almost certainly left a mark. “Not a devil. No breach of the Cult’s task to stem Avernus incursions.”
“Are you bleeding?” Oh, so now she noticed.
“She's tenacious.”
Judith’s armour tinkled as she put her hands on her hips. “Are you serious?”
“I told you. She has fire.” He raised his head, closing his hands around her again and feeling her throw herself against the cage of his fingers. Releasing her into Judith’s care would mean a very short existence, but the challenging of authority in a directed manner could better serve Production rather than Performance, and the Voices of Rakdos that ran that side of the Cult’s operations could be trusted at least. “Can someone please send for the Voices. Ah! Little one! No more biting. Look at you, you're covered in muck.”
The ogre, eager to be away from the danger, raised his hand and quickly darted out and into the halls of Rixx Maadi for the request.
“It has to be destroyed.” One last, desperate, sulky line. Judith’s last attempt at him, but Rakdos didn’t care for tears that could be switched on and off like that to get one’s way. Judith was a diva, sure, but tears like this didn’t move Rakdos.
“No. And I need you to stop arguing with me and accept it – this is a hard line, Judith.” She flinched at the fullness of her name. “Fiend-born as she may be, she didn't ask to be, she isn't breaking any rules, and while I'm aware that there are those that might twist it - the Azorius certainly find loopholes, as do the Orzhov - may I remind you that the magic that binds us is dying. This is not a breaking of the damned Pact - and since when do you of all people care for such rules? Let us die a quiet death and leave the world to those that still dance. And also, if you call her ‘it’ one more time, I will bite you in two.”
She threw up her hands, called him a range of insults that did make him smile a bit, and stormed out of the pit with Exava quickly following in tow.
He waited until the footsteps died away, and the cacklers relaxed back into their soft hissing and whispers in the Deep Tongues. Alone with his people, Rakdos very quickly reset all of his wards, and opened his presence to gently cover the child, opened his mind and gently brushed against the flicker of the little girl – a mind like a fractal of light, catching the first rays of dawn. Golds, lavenders, blues and silvers. She stilled, still rowdy (ah! Here was her fear, buried beneath that bravado.) but he sensed her own darkness behind her eyes (Yes, a girl. Always best to check, and that could always change later of course), and the sickness that spread through her body that had destroyed most of the children they had found so far. But she was strong however – fighting every step of the way, certainly quite the spark! He lightly pinned her with a thumb, and she thrashed but then slowed, seeming to understand he was just trying to look at her.
She needed a bath. The horns might be a problem…but he was here to create chaos, after all.
“I'm not upset with you because you bit me.” He said quietly to her. “All I ask is that you do not do that again. I am very large, and you are very small. You are very brave! But I want you to know it is okay, and if you need to be anything else, that is okay as well.” Words had power in general here, but in this place, in his lair? Hmm. He exhaled slowly over her, flickering embers that made her squint and claw again. The black hummed in her, although small, a power that was closely focused to survival to the point it near eclipsed everything else. An ember hovered over her head, changing to a flame that balanced there before it snuffed itself out. “As long as you wish it, you have a home here. You have been hurt, and I am sorry if my people or I have caused you more harm in this. We had hoped to find you, and people like you, and bring you to safety.”
Her mind shifted. Rakdos let it fall through his fingers like sand, catching faces, places, names, a rush of those she knew and had trusted, once. Love and grief, betrayal. A taste of blood-damp earth, sunflower seeds, the smell of summer. Tiles baked by the sun, hot beneath skin. Darkened rooms, running in the dark, the abyss. And the bells of the Undercity. Ah. Gang war then. Probably a burst of that magic, and her fellows would have…yes. That explained the clothing and the feral behaviour. Shut away what you can’t understand. Pass it on to the next person as soon as possible…
He felt her look to him, those big eyes studying him thoughtfully.
“Can you...speak?” She had, once, but the trauma might have taken it. The Cult had its own healers who were used to dealing with trauma, and with time it could be restored. Perhaps. With work.
But the girl surprised him, nodded, tried to form words. Rakdos wondered how long they had kept her in solitary confinement, trapped in filth until they knew what to do with her down there.
And more importantly, why he cared.
He lightened the pressure, and she squirmed out, but still used his thumb for support. And that look – she was not backing down.
It took a few tries, and a very loud, snotty sneeze, but she managed'. “Um. Eris. My name is Eris.”
“Eris?” He asked. Interesting. An old word for chaos and discord – how deliciously fitting. “A pleasure to meet you, Eris. How would you like to work with us?”
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