Quoted By:
It feels right in your hands. No, <span class="mu-i">right</span> does not quite describe - cannot hope to capture - the feeling that thrums inside of your chest, your gut, your mind, your heart, your <span class="mu-i">everything</span>, as you hold the Litany of Blackthorn in your hands. You felt it too in the realm of dreams, when you used this very weapon to drive the Witch of Depravity from your mind. It is a greater understanding than something that <span class="mu-i">feels right</span>, yet at the same time the sensation every bit as simple, every bit as primal as a mere gut-feeling.
Your right eye opens.
It sees the echoes of the young St. Augustine, whose ashes infuse the devil-binding seals that bind your left arm and your right eye. The martyred boy's prayers become a shackle upon the accursed darkness, and that your eye can see beyond the Saint's suppression of all curses shows that its vision is not evil.
The blue of your left eye melts into the same shining green that colors your mana. Your right eye blooms with an inverted Flower of Life, an emerald blossom whose three petals shine past the seal with searing holy light. The golden sign of the sacred prism glows along with it, and superimposed upon one another they almost seem to make two fragments of a greater whole. You see it not, but the lights begin to spin and swirl around one another until they meld together in a flickers tongue of fire.
Your right eye burns. The flames within your vision burn away the lies of perception and show you the naked truth, the world as it is rather than how you perceive it to be. The demon rising from the circle moves like smoke caught in a wind that has granted a horrific form, a mound of groping tendrils with no other purpose than impregnating the women in its clutches with lies, that they might bear unspeakable and wretch truths into the world. Like inkstains on a page torn from your journal, the tendrils swirl and spread through the warehouse, pumping deceit into the bodies and minds of your dear servants.
The veil of flames bare their truths to you as well.
The half-hearted struggles of Joana, who wants to resist the depravations of the beast but harbors traitorous thoughts that coil around her heart. Lonely and set apart, reclusive by habit and carrying many secrets, slower to trust and always doubting affection, her expression hidden in the smoke and the subtle motions of her body betray that tiny, niggling doubt. If one cannot find a partner to embrace them, then why not accept the embrace of an inhuman monster and make pretend that it's love?
In contrast, the youngest of her students resists as violently as her drug addled mind will let her. Even with the rising heat of her body and loins, even under the attentions of monster designed by the Dark One himself to break the minds of men and women with incomprehensible pleasure, she squirms at her binds, biting and gnashing, refusing everything the demon sends at her. You feel in her a kindred spirit, a fellow young woman in love...
