Mhainsa: Dark Pressure

Chapter One

The house on the hill was filled with screams, but no one beyond its walls could hear them. The edifice was two stories tall, and yet it seemed larger, and more imposing, than its physical dimensions could account for. This may have had something to do with the house's owner, a man named Yuri Erasmus, who had come to the town of Mhainsa and finished having his house built eight years ago, in the spring of 1862. Few knew what exactly it was that Erasmus actually did in life, but he was rich enough that hopes were initially high for the prosperity he might bring to the developing town by placing his residence right in its center. Those hopes were gone now. Gone like so many of the town's population, dragged off into the night, kicking and screaming, and yet heard and seen by no one.

Eventually, however, after all those years, the good people of Mhainsa could reach only one conclusion, based on the evidence that had been gathered: Erasmus was responsible for the disappearances. And yet it took two years before anyone could muster up the courage to take action. Two more years of abductions, as people avoided even looking in the direction of the house on the hill. Of late there seemed to be a warping in the air at times, surrounding the house. A darkness that permeated the vicinity of the hill, whether day or night, not just visible to the eye, but acknowledged by the heart as well. Whatever was happening in the house was intrinsically wrong.

But Erasmus had finally gone too far. Where not even the abduction of wives, husbands, parents, siblings, lovers, and children could properly stir up Mhainsa's inhabitants to strike back, when word reached them that Sister Alice White had vanished it was only a handful of hours before the entire town was mobilized to march on Erasmus' home. Alice was a priestess who had been sent from an abbey in the mountains to the west, to be the spiritual compass for Mhainsa's people, and to help them in any way she could. This she had set about doing with such fervor that the people could not help but love her for her dedication. And now she was gone. Gone like so many others. The people would not tolerate this. They would not let Alice White be subjected to whatever horrors Erasmus had in store for her. It was time to strike.

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Alice White was tied down on a table, in a basement within Erasmus' house. Sweat glistened on her flesh in the torchlight, highlighting her nude form. She was not sweating because it was overly warm. On the contrary, it was exceptionally cold. She sweated because of her fear. She had already been tortured in various ways, none of them leaving behind any physical mark to mar her exceptional beauty, and yet no less horrific than if Erasmus had done to her as he had done to the others that Alice had seen. And yet, she sensed somehow that the worst was yet to come.

Erasmus stood nearby, garbed in a black robe with demonic symbols stitched into the fabric with silver thread. His red-brown hair was cut short, and his features might have been handsome if they were not so drawn, and haggard, as though he had not slept properly in months. And then there were his eyes... His eyes were red. Crimson like fire, and full of malice. His hands were pale and gaunt, and yet they did not shake as he flipped quickly through various tomes, nor did they falter as he adjusted a collection of ingredients within a white-chalk circle on the floor for the thousandth time. Instead he moved with grace, speed, and precision that would have served him well as a rifleman, fighting against the Rebels.

Alice wanted to look away. She wanted to close her eyes and try to lose herself in some fantasy world where she wouldn't have to keep agonizing over what this monster in human form might be planning. But she couldn't keep her gray eyes off of him. As he moved off to the side, she shook her head, to try to move some strands of blonde hair out of her face, and then craned her neck to watch Erasmus with growing apprehension, as he took a vial of what looked like ink, as well as an ornamental dagger, and examined each as though they might be something else in disguise. Finally, satisfied, the red-eyed man turned and approached Alice, giving a faint smile towards her when he noticed her watching. The priestess managed to close her eyes then, not wanting to see his smile, but when she opened them again, it was as though Erasmus had forgotten she existed, as he walked around to the side of the table and loomed over her.

"Why are you doing this?" Alice heard herself ask, surprised both at the fact she had spoken, and at the strength in her voice, after what she had suffered. Erasmus looked vaguely towards Alice for a moment before swishing the black liquid around in the vial, and looking at it in the flickering light.
"You still have not recognized me for who and what I am? You must be a weaker priestess than even I had imagined. Luckily you will make up for your uselessness as a spiritual leader with your other qualities." Erasmus had been speaking down to her since she had been brought here. It was clear that he viewed her as less than human, less than animal. An object to do with as he pleased. The only reason he was speaking to her now was because it amused him to do so. Undaunted by the insults, Alice watched the vial and dagger cautiously as she spoke again.
"Assuming you are correct about me being weak, why not tell me what you are planning, since there is no way I can figure it out?"
"You are not going to stop talking until I tell you, are you?" Erasmus sighed as he rolled his eyes. "You know, I ordinarily do not tell my toys why I do anything. Many have died not knowing why, even as their last breaths were devoted to screaming out the question over and over again. But I cannot kill you yet, and I am not entertained by your badgering, so I will first tell you how to see the truth for yourself, before I explain it in the detail a simpleton like yourself requires."

Erasmus put down the vial inbetween Alice's legs, making her jolt from the incredible coldness and wrongness that she could feel when the glass came in contact with her most sensitive and secret place. She glanced down at it nervously, and then back up at Erasmus, as he put down his dagger on the table near Alice's feet, and left it there. "You are supposedly a believer in God, correct?" Alice cautiously nodded in response to the question. "Certain abilities are granted to some of the more devout followers of certain religions. Among them is the ability to recognize the power of Hell, and the presence of demons. I want you to try to focus on your faith, and then look at me. Try to see my soul, and what I really am." Then Erasmus crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

Alice was tired and confused, but she tried to follow the directions she had been given. The only reason she didn't refuse was because she was supposed to be drawing on her faith and the powers of God, rather than whatever arcane and twisted devilry that Erasmus worked with. She focused her thoughts on her time in the abbey, learning the ways of a priestess, and of God's will. She focused on her joy when she had been determined fit to journey forth to Mhainsa as a representative of the church. She recalled the connections and friendships she had formed with the other people in town as she worked with them each day, listened to their problems, and their fears, and did her best to soothe them. She felt herself filling up with... With warmth, and strength, and light. It was something she had never before experienced. And then she came back to herself, and realized she had been staring at the ceiling for an indeterminate amount of time. She wasn't sure how long it had been, but Erasmus had moved, and was off at his desk reading a particularly disgusting book that appeared to be bound in human flesh. He looked up when Alice gasped and recoiled at what she saw.

The room she was in was darker than it had been before. The torchlight was insufficient to ward of the waves of roiling blackness, and those waves were radiating from Erasmus himself. Vaguely, his physical features were super-imposed over a nebulous storm of black and red, seething within the outline of his body, and sending jagging bolts of cold terror through Alice with every second spent looking at it. She couldn't look any longer and closed her eyes, turning away. But though this diminished some of her fear, she could still feel that horrible force with her new senses. Whatever she had done, she had awoken new abilities within herself -- and they served only to make her stay in the house more intolerable. She recognized now what that sensation was that she sensed... It was Evil. Pure evil, in its undiluted state. It was sickening and terrifying simultaneously, drawing rapid gasps from Alice that made her chest rise and fall as though she had just run a hundred-mile race.

And then she felt a physical contact on one of her breasts, and she screamed as cold blackness shot through her more painfully than any rifle's shot, searing her very being with the raw malice contained in that simple touch. Then the contact withdrew, as Erasmus made a surprised noise, and Alice came back to her senses, gasping for breath, and lowering her reflexively arched back to the cold stone surface beneath her. She dazedly turned her head and opened her eyes, and saw that the initial intensity of the evil in Erasmus' soul had diminished greatly, to the point where there was only a writhing black aura about him, instead of the full essence of his dread power. Yuri Erasmus had one eyebrow arched, his crimson eyes staring penetratingly into Alice's own, clearly suspicious. The priestess could not think of what she had done to make him react so.

"Well, well. Maybe you are not so weak after all. To obtain such sensitivity from such simple instructions as I provided... A natural empath, you are. Well, I suppose that will just make things all the more delicious, then, will it not?" Erasmus smiles patronizingly at Alice and then picked up his dagger and slowly slid the vial of black liquid up across the woman's privates. She shuddered in disgust at his teasing, and toying, but eventually it ended, and she made the mistake of relaxing. The moment she allowed her strained muscles to loosen, she felt a pain on her forehead, and she opened her eyes to see that Erasmus has his dagger pressed to it. After that, things became much worse for the priestess.

The evil sorcerer trailed the dagger point back and forth across the crown of Alice's head, as though scratching in stone rather than flesh. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, not wanting to give that satisfaction to the fiend, but he seemed most intent on what he was doing, not on Alice's reactions to it. Eventually, he swiftly moved down each side of the woman's face, until he connected the cuts under her chin, and then he headed down her throat. The stinging pain, and the feeling of her flesh parting beneath the blade, as well as the warmth of blood spilling down her body, onto the table she was bound to, were horrendous, but they were not so severe that Alice abandoned her resolution to remain silent. Eventually, Erasmus finished his grisly task, and Alice managed to open her eyes, and focus her sight through the lingering stinging, looking down at herself.

She was covered in lines composed of cut flesh and blood. Curving and twisting along her body, they formed some intricate design of undoubtedly evil purpose, though surprisingly her more sensitivie regions were left untouched, with the lines terminating in thick arrow-head points near them only. Alice felt tainted by these injuries. She was not concerned about what scars might be left behind when they healed, but more the fact that she had been marked by a force of evil for some dire purpose. Erasmus looked the priestess over, inspecting his work, before nodding and saying, "It seems we are finally ready to begin."

"B-begin... What?" Alice managed through clenched teeth, as the burning all over her body, and the trickling of hot blood across her skin, and the terror of her situation, all waged war on her ability to remain coherent. Erasmus shook his head in disgust.
"I thought you were just pretending to be an ignorant worm at first, but I see you truly do not know anything. There are certain men and women who have been chosen by the forces of Order and Chaos to champion their causes. Seven Virtuous Souls and seven Viceful Souls. We are granted special powers, and special importance in the heirarchy of souls, and it is our task to advance the goals of our particular Virtue or Vice whenever possible. I am the Malicious Soul, and I have identified you as the Valorous Soul." Erasmus moved with surprising swiftness, leaping up onto the table so that he was on all-fours, over Alice. His face inches away from hers, his burning red eyes stared into her own.
"W--No. You are mistaken. I am God's servant, and His alone. I have never sworn allegiance to your mystickal--" Alice protested, but was interrupted by Erasmus's cold features twisting into a beastial expression as he screamed in her face, and the black power of Malice blasted over out from her torturer, washing over her and steeping the entire room in darkness. She silenced herself immediately, eyes wide in shock, body trembling. Erasmus ceased his yelling, and the darkness slowly receded like he was a hole in the universe, through which darkness could seep out, or be sucked in. The evil man then laughed and turned his head away for a moment, before sitting up.
"It does not matter whether you choose to accept your position and your powers or not." Erasmus smiled down at her, and then said mock soothingly, "Because very soon you will not have them!" He leaned down again, putting his face close, and began stroking his hand through Alice's blonde hair, sending pulses of frigid pain through her skull at his mere touch. Then he began whispering. "I am going to infuse your body with the power of Malice, and unite it with the Valor within you, and then you will give birth! You will give birth to a Demon-God, which I will then possess, inhabiting it like a hollow shell, into which my soul will fit /perfectly/." he gripped both sides of Alice's face and shook her head, as he asked between sharpened teeth, "Now won't that be something to see? The union of an agent of Chaos with an agent of Order... The creation of a Balance between the two forces... And then I will have all I need to go to Hell, and absorb the souls of the Damned, and the souls of Demons both, and return to Earth to breed and possess the other agents of Order and Chaos!"

Erasmus's eyes glistened with tears of joy as he spoke in an ecstatic whisper. Through the pain and the turmoil in Alice's mind and body, she tried to comprehend the enormity of what Erasmus was saying. It sounded to her like the ramblings of a mad man, and yet she could not deny that she had felt things well beyond any experiences prior to now since she came here, and witnessed horrors she had never before dreamed existed. Was Erasmus... Trying to become God?

"You will fail," Alice White said with such determination and conviction that she surprised even herself. Erasmus reeled back as though struck. Alice pressed on, saying, "Lucifer attempted to overthrow God, and he was cast down into the same Hell you attempt to gain power from now. If all the power of Hell is not enough for the Devil to become God, then it is pure arrogance to think that /you/, of all people, could do better." Erasmus had recovered from his shock and now bared his teeth in rage, breathing rapidly and looking increasingly unstable. Alice, perhaps foolishly, ignored the seething of her tormentor, and continued on to say, "There is only one God. He will not be replaced by the likes of /you/." Then Erasmus looked from side to side, as he composed himself, slowing down his breathing. He looked Alice more or less calmly in the eye, and patted her bloody cheek.
"We shall see," he said simply, as he climbed off the table, and off of Alice. "We shall see."

Erasmus picked up the vial of inky liquid and approached Alice. Her previous courage withered as she felt the intense wrongess of the vial's contents without even touching it. When Erasmus unstoppered the vial, and upturned it, emptying its contents onto her forehead, she began to sob hysterically, feeling like she was being immersed in an ocean of ice... Like she was being buried alive amongst a thousand other corpses... Like she was being infected with liquid hate. The black liquid flowed along the cuts in her flesh like a living thing, never spilling out of the pattern, just spreading and spreading until the lines were turned black, instead of the dark-red of spilt blood. It seemed to be too thick to get inside of her body any further, however, and she felt something inside of her rebel against the wicked forces present in the blackness. Some inner power was keeping it from possessing her.

Alice was so intent on the black liquid that she was unaware of Erasmus disrobing until he was again atop her. He tilted his head, smirked, and said, "Well, shall we get on with it?" Then he plunged forward, and Alice screamed, not just as the pain of losing her virginity, but at the feeling of her inner strength withering, and the hideous liquid hate leaking into her blood. She could feel it mixing with her emotions, with her soul. Her mind started to become choked with malicious thoughts, and an all-consuming desire to rend Erasmus into shreds, and then to kill everyone else she came across, in a never-ending slaughter, until she was the only one left. She felt stronger, like she had the power to fulfill this dark ambition. This was not the strength she had felt before. This was the same power that Erasmus possessed.

That thought was enough to jar Alice into action. She didn't want to become like this monster in human form! She didn't want to succumb to hate! She prayed to God, to Order, to Valor, to any force she thought would listen, to give her their strength, so that she could fight back. As Erasmus sawed in and out of her, rubbing her insides raw, and lessening her resistance to his Malice, a spark of flame ignited within Alice. A flame that was not doused by the darkness swirling inside of her, but only grew hotter in response to it. Hotter and brighter, the flame grew, until Alice felt full of strength to overflowing. Not the strength of hate, of revenge, of vindictiveness... But the strength of the courage to persevere against hardship. She was still afraid of all this, she was even angry at Erasmus, but she did not hate him, and though she feared, she refused to give in and cower before this devil. If she was the Valorous Soul, then she would use whatever strength she had been granted to fight back.

Erasmus was breathing heavily as her worked to release, knowing that Alice was fighting back thanks to his own advanced senses, and being surprised at how much of a battle she was putting up. He had taken her for a weakling with only the barest connection to her inherent powers. A mindless sheep following the demands of an arrogant god-being, instead of forging her own path in life. But she had the heat of Valor surging within her, and that made her only more desirable to Erasmus. More desirable, but also more dangerous. He had to suppress her power before he released, or all his work would be for naught. The Malicious Soul grabbed each of Alice's breasts in his hands and squeezed hard, not trying to give her pleasure, but pain. He dug his fingernails into her flesh, as he hammered away at her, trying to use pain to distract her. It did not work. He realized that he was very close, and Valor was overcoming the Malice infusion he had given the priestess. He was supposed to keep all his power in reserve for what was to come, but he fed some of it into this ritual anyway, trying to batter down Alice's defenses.

In this he likewise failed. The heat in Valor's insides was making Erasmus's time very short. In a panic he fed even more of his Malice into the connection between himself and the woman beneath him, engaging in a war of wills. A battle of Vice versus Virtue. All around, red and white swirled amongst a darker red and purest black, sweeping across the laboratory, scarring the walls and the ceiling, burning the edges of papers, as raw forces of Order and Chaos battled against each other. Finally, the climax came, and when Malice released his seed into Valor... Valor was not sufficiently weakened. The ritual failed. Malice screamed in rage and pain as Valor turned the magics at work back on him, charring his flesh with flame that erupted from nowhere, blackening his form.

Valor then snapped her bonds as though they were wet paper, exhibiting strength well beyond human, grabbing Malice by his throat full of ashes, and hurling him across the room. He landed in the ritual circle, just as it began to surge with arcane magicks gone awry, spilling ingredients and making the situation even worse. Writhing and screaming, Malice managed, with inhuman stamina of his own, to pull himself from the circle, as his smoking flesh ceased burning, leaving him a withered, blackened husk that still lived. Valor rolled off the table, and vomitted up the liquid Malice that had gotten into her blood. The black substance landed in the circle, and that's when something terrible happened. Terrible beyond all the other terrible events that night.

The stone floor melted like running wax, and sank into itself, leaving behind a charred black circle of chalk, with rune-like markings, surrounding a pit descending deep into the earth. The walls were lined with the souls of the damned, reddened with blood and the glow of flame, screaming in pain, as their spirit-flesh fused together from the heat. Malice looked at the pit with its one functional eye, and then grinned a charred grin, as he whispers, "The Maw... I made it after all..." Then he cackled for a few seconds before dropping dead on the floor. That was not the end of Yuri Erasmus, however. His black and red vortex of hate that had replaced his soul left his remains behind, and dove willingly into a pit leading to Hell. Dove and burst into hell-fire flames, before spiralling down into the darkness.

Valor drew upon instinctive powers and chanted a prayer in Latin, before aiming both of her palms at the Maw, and invoking all her faith, all the power of her Virtue, and sealing the Maw shut. It became just a hole in the ground, the damned souls instantly vanishing, to be replaced by dirt walls. Alice, drained of Valor's strength temporarily, reverted to her normal self, and dropped to her knees, arms wrapped around her body. The lines cut into her flesh were already half-healed, though they would leave scars. And that was how the people of Mhainsa would find Alice White and Yuri Erasmus. The first, a traumatized woman, who had been tortured and raped, the latter, a charred corpse lying next to a hole in the ground that radiated wickedness.

Alice was ushered away from the house of Erasmus, while workers immediately began bricking up the laboratory, to seal it away for good, and was then attended to by doctors. When asked what had happened to Erasmus, Alice said only, "The Devil must have taken him." She left unsaid her fear that the opposite was the case: That Erasmus had taken the Devil.

End Chapter One