Sisters of Sodom

Her hand flew to the breastplate beneath her catsuit, rubbing her fingertips across the runic inscription running along its edges. "Ạđhea Ễìbhon F'az, Ŀocrea Nonoch Fi e' Əŧrì Ma-noa Giyǣda Kan": Those who walk the path of the pythoness must keep the link between the living and the dead.

She had never given this phrase much thought before; frankly, most of the pythoness lore she'd bothered to read—which wasn't much—came across as far too obtuse and flowery for her to truly care about. But in this particular moment, with the bodies of newly-departed souls still writhing on the floor about her, these words took form in her mind.

"The link between the living...and the dead," she mumbled to herself, her eyes watering from the fetid ambience of the hipster girl's dangling sock.

Then she remembered one spell she'd practiced and perfected on animal carcasses some months ago. A spell of reanimation upon bodies no longer tethered to their souls required relatively little magical energy to cast, given the lack of spiritual resistance. But it required plenty of skill, something Eudora had in spades.

"Vao Kan-Ŀocrea Ġớhme!" Eudora bellowed so loudly that it finally shook away Hailey's bullshit smirk, startling the girl into a wide-eyed stare.

With that, Eudora immediately read the energies of the dead and dying bodies scattered about. Most of them were long departed, but a few had some lingering, fading light left inside of them.

She knew the gradations better than anyone. The young redheaded flight attendant in the far corner? Stone dead; her soul was far away from this place. But the large pasty bald man right beneath Hailey's cute little ass? Not only could he be easily reanimated, but Eudora could sense that he wasn't even medically dead yet. Even a talented mortal doctor could probably still save the man's life. This, she knew, would be a piece of cake.

She focused her energy on the man and quickly he began to shift. Hailey screamed and leapt off of him, her glasses going askew on her precious little doll face as she turned sharply. The man slowly rose, blood still gushing from the deep 6-inch gash across his throat, his head bobbing mindlessly.

His puffy grey eyes opened, lifted, and fixed themselves on Hailey. And then, some clouded expression of anger could be seen forming on his sallow face.

Alive or dead, the man was far from anything either woman found attractive. His facial features were almost comically droopy, like a bulldog's, and deep bags under his eyes spoke of a man who slept little and smoked much. His mottled scalp glistened with sweat, and his beefy forearms were covered in a thick layer of gray hair. Clipped to his soiled vest was a name tag: Rich.

"Looks like you have an admirer," Eudora said as the undead man lunged towards Hailey vengefully. Hailey shrieked, dropping her sock and jumping evasively only to trip on another corpse and fall.

"What do you think, Hailey? Maybe I can set you and 'Rich' up? He seems like the type who would jerk off to your selfies on his spare time. Maybe you'd be a match?" Eudora said as she took a step closer.

The moving corpse turned, staggering as he swung his arms at Hailey again. She screamed again and rolled away only to be grabbed at the ankle. Eudora laughed and then transmitted this message into the man's decaying brain: fuck her, hard. The man let out some strange gurgle and yanked Hailey by the legs until he was almost on top of her small flailing body.

"I guess you won't be wearing white to your wedding though. Looks like 'Rich' here is feeling a little too frisky to save it for your honeymoon night. Good thing you wore a skirt, hm? Maybe I should give you two some privacy?" Eudora cackled even as she struggled to ignore that discarded sock laying on the floor some feet away.

The man was now sprouting a prominent erection, and, pinning Hailey down with his weight, he ripped his khaki pants and briefs down to expose his slightly bent, stubby penis. It stood to attention in some bizarre state of post-mortem priapism, precum glistening at the purple head just inches from Hailey's crotch.

For the first time, the hipster girl looked truly frightened. Her little chest rose and fall quickly as if in the beginning stages of hyperventilation, her a desperate warble audible in her breathing. She whipped her head to the side, looking into Eudora's eyes, and then suddenly, she vanished completely.

"Wait, what the fuck?!" Eudora shouted. She her head in surprise. The way the girl just silently disappeared was particularly unusual. It wasn't like the dramatic light show inherent in regular teleportation spells. This girl was decidedly no pythoness, Eudora thought, but then what else could Hailey be, if she had such powers?

Her eyes flew to the undead man mindlessly humping the carpet like an animal. Utter disgust rose within her, and she waved her hand to undo her spell. The man paused, grumbled in confusion, and then fell to the floor, never to move again.

"Damn it!" Eudora bellowed, kicking the man's body with her steel-toed boot and hearing the thump of now truly lifeless flesh. "How the hell am I going to get out of here without being implicated in a damned mass murder..." she looked around the room, wondering how long it would take for the pilots to become aware of the fact that none of their crew were responsive.

She knew what she would have to do.

It would be a monumental expenditure of energy, but it would be even more of one to have to deal with law enforcement. She could sense she was close enough to Norway now that it should be possible...but not before she picked up that sock.

She walked over to it laying on the floor, and lifted it to her face. That ripe stink assaulted her senses, immediately causing a slick wetness to pool at her crotch. She would save this one for later, to add to her collection, yes.

But as she felt about it, she could feel something crunchy on the interior of the sock. She reached inside of it, retrieving a little post-it note. The handwriting immediately revealed its author; pink ink, girlishly bubbly handwriting, i's dotted with hearts.

It read, "Dear Eudora, I hate to split, but looks like you should too unless you wanna go to jail! Either way, you'll be even weaker the next time we meet! ♥ Have fun slurping on my sock, loser! ^_^ xoxo, Hailey"

Eudora's fury was at a fever pitch. She knew full well that there was no way she'd be walking away from this carnage without the use of teleportation magic, as draining as that would be. Could she afford to lose that much now?

How could she travel deep into Norway to find the next treasure with such little magical power left? It would take her months to regenerate it all, and that was time she couldn't afford to spend. She crumpled up the paper and then, with a surge of witch energy, burnt it to ash in her hand.

"Aüjin Fai-Ēquoi!" she yelled, and in a flash, she conjured up just enough energy to send her body hurtling through spacetime. Where she'd end up, she could not tell. All she could hope as she blacked out was that she was close enough to Norway to pull it off.

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SIGNEKJERRINGØYATHE

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Eudora sealed her fur coat tighter, trying to shield herself against the cold northern winds howling about her. Ever since leaving the mainland, her entire world had been engulfed in an eerie, almost supernatural blanket of white.

Through the snowy haze, a faint smudge was gradually emerging. Her eyes locked on it. This, she knew, was her destination: the remote Norwegian island colloquially known as Signekjerringøyathe.

Traveling there was illegal, and for good reason—nothing she'd read about this island painted it as even remotely hospitable. While the four ferrymen who dutifully rowed behind her undoubtedly thought her mad, the sizable wad of kroner she'd thrown at their feet would keep them quiet.

It was more money than those men probably ever had in one place, judging from their shabby looks. At this rate it would take another half hour to reach the island dock, so she knew there was still time.

"Time to tend to other issues," the punk witch told herself as she took cover behind a solid oak partition. Desiring to check the news, she reached for her phone. Not surprisingly, there was no reception.

If she weren't so wiped out from her last encounter with Hailey, should could have just weaved a spell to remedy this, but she thought it best to conserve her powers for now. She then turned to look at the gaunt, glassy-eyed ferrymen, noticing that one of them had a rolled up newspaper crammed into his front coat pocket.

"Hey, you," she called over to him. "Let me see that," she said, pointing.

"Hm?" He responded, then slowly comprehended her request. "Oh. Ja." His leathery red fingers retrieved the newspaper, and he handed it to her with a gentlemanly nod that irked her.

She snatched it from him, not bothering to even catch his reaction to her rudeness, and unraveled it eagerly. She couldn't read the language, but what she was looking for would most likely include pictures, she figured.

She was correct. The minute she lay her yes on the cover page, Eudora felt a pleasant shiver traveling through her spine. The headline read: JENTE DREPT I BRUTALT OVERFALL, and below it, a photo of a girl laying on the street with a police blanket over most of her body.

There was blood everywhere, which made Eudora chuckle at how far even Norwegian papers would go these days just to secure a few more sales—and the stranger's only visible parts hinted at some sleek-looking black outfit.

"Hey," Eudora said again, waving at the men. "What does this say?" she said, flashing the headline at them. The one nearest to her, a youngish man with a bushy brown beard, seemed anxious about falling out of synch with his fellow rowers, but managed to quickly glance at the paper.

"Eh? It is, uh..." he hesitated, finding the translation process difficult. "It say...girl killed. In brutal...how you say. Brutal assault. So sad..."

Comprehending the man through his thick accent, Eudora's eyes lit up, savoring each word like an artist admiring her own masterpiece taking form, piece by piece: GIRL KILLED IN BRUTAL ASSAULT. Music to her ears.

"Oh yes, so sad," she parroted, barely concealing her glee. The men looked at her strangely, but she did not care. "I hope they found him? The killer?" she asked blithely.

"Killer? Oh. Jeg vet ikke..." the man replied, shaking his head.

"Wha? Speak English already!"

"Oh. I do not know. It is...mystery," the man grunted distractedly amidst heavy shoves of his oar.

She turned away, mumbling to herself with a grin on her face: "Well, you sure served me well, girlie..." She squinted at the foreign text, unable to make much out, but it didn't matter. She only needed to know that someone had indeed died. Or better, that someone had been brutally murdered - because that meant her little diversion had worked.

With her notebook compromised, she knew that the forces under Ayaka's purview would be hot on her trail, but with this bit of artifice—a faked death—she hoped to throw all other potential rivals off her scent.

She knew there must be at least a dozen other witches across the globe searching for the same artifact, and if they thought simply traveling to the scene of this crime would give them clues as to how to find it, they would be sorely mistaken. That corpse she'd left behind was hundreds of miles away from this mysterious place.

She thought back to that artful murder she now savored. She'd met the poor young soul wandering the nighttime streets of Tromsø earlier. The minute she laid eyes on her, Eudora knew she'd be perfect for her designs.

There were a few indicators of this. There was the fact that the girl was visibly very drunk, and upon further inspection, somewhat mentally ill. Her manner of dress, being both rumpled and revealing, heavily implied prostitution. And what a stroke of luck to find a girl of of her complexion in such an ordinarily pale region—just close enough to Eudora's own to do the trick.

Most importantly, the girl was alone. Eudora quickly gleaned that nobody would be too surprised to find this girl dead.

It was easy to lure the girl into an alleyway and whack her head with a shovel. And then all that was a donation of clothes to craft the perfect decoy. She'd miss that expensive catsuit, but it'd been singed a bit during the last teleportation anyway, so it was best to put it to better use.

The awkward wardrobe swap meant Eudora had to wear the clothes of a common Scandanavian street whore until sunrise, but that was a small indignity to tolerate in the grand scheme.

And now she was decked out in much more appropriate attire for her quest: a large black fur coat, kevlar-reinforced jeans, two layers of woolen long underwear, and thick turtleneck, under which lay her sacred breastplate. Fingerless padded gloves, a heavy utility belt lined with survival gear, reinforced combat boots, and purple tube socks completed the ensemble. And of course, in her hand she clutched her big trusty shovel.

As she kept staring at the photo in the paper, Eudora momentarily wondered how much pain the drunken girl had felt at the moment of impact, or if she had died the instant that shovel split her skull. It didn't matter, really, but these were the things she pondered to pass the time.

Whatever the case, whichever pythonesses foolishly believed Eudora to be "out of the picture" were now well behind her. "Very good, girl..." Eudora sighed in smug satisfaction.

The sound of a rusty bell interrupted her thoughts and made her realize the ferry had almost arrived. Eudora put the phone away. She then grabbed her other things and moved inside to wave a disingenuous farewell to the men who had just taken 1,600,000 kr to break the law and send a lone woman off to a notoriously dangerous island.

Of course, she didn't intend to let these men enjoy the fruits of their labor. With a wave of her hand, she cast a simple but particularly insidious curse on the lot of them, one they wouldn't feel until they were well out of sight. By then, they'd be hemorrhaging from their mouths and eyes.

Eudora made an educated guess while stepping off the ferry boat—"You'll all be dead in an hour or so," she whispered just out of an earshot. The four men turned the boat around and naively went on their way, waving and mouthing the obligatory "Hade!" and "Lykke til!" as they sailed back out to sea.

It only took a couple of minutes to leave the dock and the old boat behind. The fog enshrouded the entire shore and left Eudora alone with herself and the motionless white. Eudora looked around, somehow feeling at peace, like she belonged here.

She had read a few things about the island itself, particularly about its abandoned fortresses and the weird forests that surrounded them, but she strongly suspected that no human had set foot on these environs in quite some time.

Eudora ventured forward at her own pace, toward the island's center where the entrance to the ruins was supposed to be. Soon, the once impervious Viking fortress appeared in front of her, emerging from the dense mist and towering with its might.

Moving closer, the punk pythoness reached for the ancient stones that made up the outer walls of this fortress, caressing them. She shivered and felt herself softly moaning as she felt the blood of hundreds men pulsating throughout the stone. She could almost taste the anger and fears of all those who had died here fighting for all their trivial mortal reasons.

Eudora's breath became heavier as she bathed in the dark energies wafting up from the mud at her feet and seeping from the crumbling walls.

Then, she halted.

A pythoness's ability to commune with such morbid places also meant she would sense any foreign presence like a red spot on a white sheet. And there, Eudora could clearly sense two different intruders wandering the halls underneath her feet.

Fuck..." she cursed with a low voice, but then she realized that they'd be much less likely to detect her presence if she remained there outside the entrance for a moment.

The two foreign beings—she was almost sure them being pythonesses—were ahead, but also probably unaware of her presence, which gave her an advantage she had no intention to spoil. A wicked smile on her face, Eudora consumed a bit of her own power to cloak herself, and then entered the darkness ahead. The artifact was calling for her from deep beneath the ground...

Eudora descended through a series of vast abandoned hallways, down through a maze-like wooden cellar. She was moving slowly, careful not to make any noise or being taken off guard. Every step forward, she carefully evaluated her surroundings, sensing the rival pythoness's presences and focusing more of energy on maintaining the cloaking spell.

Those tasks were demanding on her body, and soon Eudora found herself sweating profusely—an feeling made especially uncomfortable due to the unexpectedly humid atmosphere of the place.

The more she moved downward, the more heat she could feel on her skin, like the land itself was bleeding raw power. Soon, she could not do with her coat anymore, so she tossed it aside, wiped the sweat beads on her forehead and moved forward. One of the two strangers was drawing near, and Eudora felt more than ready to take on the rival.

Moving past an old wooden archway, Eudora entered a large underground cave. To her further surprise, the belly of the fortress was a pulsating stone hall lined with hundreds of plants.

They were everywhere, vines covering the ground and all the walls like green veins. Twisted flowers dwelt there as well, with some kind of gurgling purplish sacs spread out among them like a malevolent infection.

Never before in her life had Eudora ever been so close to such a high volume of raw occult power. The realization came to her almost immediately—the cave had been a nest for countless abominations, magical experiments born from irresponsible spells or pure madness, growing deep inside the earth. The entire place was alive, and there was no telling how it would react to intruders.

Eudora crouched, placed both hands on the nearest vines and then focused her mind. A moment later, she was smiling with delight—as she'd hoped, the guardian flora in this place were weak-willed enough to manipulate, probably due to ages of inaction and lack of guidance.

Commanding those twisted tendrils would be relatively easy for her, and knowing this, she commanded them to become instruments of punishment against any who might oppose her. They reacted with a subtle palpitation, confirming her desires had been heeded. She had just obtained the perfect weapon, and now she only needed a target.

For a start, she decided to focus on the nearest threat at hand, expanding her perception and revealing what was hiding in the stone corridor to the left. To her surprise, she was none other than Hailey, that hipster eyesore of her unending ire.

That very moment, Eudora felt her entire body rushing forward, like it was quickly becoming lost in a bloody frenzy. She felt so much hate and resentment toward that obnoxious opponent that she wanted nothing more than to rip her to shreds with her bare hands...but then she halted, just barely. The effort to stop herself was so hard that she ended up almos biting her lip past the flesh.

Her rational side struggled to overcome her homicidal rage, just barely triumphing over it long enough for her to consider the situation. This hipster girl had already humiliated her twice, and had shown abilities that she could not clearly explain. That girl was also mentored by someone powerful, and there could be countless traps laid for anyone attacking her straight on.