Harriot the Golden

“Please do not do this, brother.”

Leather straps were being tied around Harriot Romma’s wrists. His squire, Ronin Baybell, secured Harriot’s stitched gloves so that they would not slip during battle. Harriot stood in the sunlit center of a small adobe recess, a room reserved for warriors before a battle in The Rose Garden. The skylight above him was a small circle centered in the middle of the room, tall enough to prevent escape but large enough to allow the cacophony of the distant crowd of the arena echo in.

Harriot stood center in the room in the harsh beam of light. Half dressed, his dark copper like skin glistened in the summer sunlight. His leg wraps were red and golden, the same color of his family’s coat of arms, and the two weaves of fabric swirled up his legs and halfway up his torso in a spiraling pattern. His chest was a tapestry of war. His body a black marble sculpt of brave, well trained muscles scared by battles long gone but often remembered. His face held a refined authority. His jaw angle was sharp and his brow stern with the sculpting of a proper soldier. But his jovial smile with one devious dimple and the loose drapes of black curls that hung from his scalp gave him a boyish charm, the youthful wile that was passed down to all true decedents of the Romma family. Charming, reverent, and all too handsome, a burden no other knight in all of Carrigo had the trouble of being.

Harriot looked at his sister, Melody, with his practiced smirk of dismissal. She was unmoved and held fast to the worry for her brother. Melody Romma wore a gown that looked like a budding marigold, a rich upturned fold of red linen upheld by some force of magic that gave the golden wrap around her waist and legs a demanding attention. From below the upward ruffle of her dress, just at her hips, long red silks hung from her waist and arched to golden bands at her wrists, slowly drifting through the air as she moved her hands, giving her the full effect of complete grace. Her face could easily be identified as being sculpted from the same crest as Harriot’s but she wore the beauty of youth more sternly and less childlike when compared to her brother. Despite the layers of golden flakes around her eyes and cheekbones, her deep hazel eyes held a seriousness that pierced through Harriot’s aloofness.

“And let dishonor fall upon our family?” Harriot said with an arched eyebrow, “I think not.” Harriot looked down and busied himself checking the knots his squire had tied.

“This has nothing to do with honor.” Melody’s tone held that same stern authority.

Harriot chuckled softly to himself.

“You know how great the pleasure is to tell you that you that you are wrong, sister. Do you protest for my benefit or are you truly serious in your accusations.”

“This is reckless violence for violence’s sake.” Melody raised an arm and pointed down the dark hallway towards the coliseum. “You will not live in a fight like this. This is battle for show, not for honor. Crowds are gathering to see you loose your head, not to see you defend your gods forsaken honor.”

“A knight must answer a challenge.” Harriot’s tone was sincere despite his sing-songy response. “Prince Rockwell dared to say that no man could defeat his newfound pet. His mistake was to say so in my presence.”

“Don’t be a fool, Harriot.” Melody said.

“Why stop now, sweet -” before he could finish Melody slapped Harriot hard across his cheek with an open hand. Squire Baybell stopped wrapping the cloth up Harriot’s arm and tensed as the room suddenly grew quiet.

“This is your life, baby brother. Do not play games that put you in such great risk.” The corner of Melody’s lip tumbled as she spoke, holding back more than anger and sorrow.

“You are exactly right, dear sister.” Harriot’s voice had lost it’s charm and was now flat and serious. Harriot gave a sharp look to Baybell. Harriot jerked his arm at him and the young squire bowed his head quickly and returned to his wrapping.

“It is my life,” Harriot said, “not yours.” Harriot’s eyes locked with Melody’s and the two said nothing more. The crowd gave a hearty roar at some unseen action beyond the walls that echoed down the long hall. Melody turned and walked through the opposite hallway, back to the stands where the spectators gathered.

Harriot and Squire Baybell finished preparing for battle in a heavy silence.

Harriot was now in his full battle garments. The cloth wrapping his legs now extended up his torso down each arm in the same swirling pattern, a brilliant mix of ruby red and rich gold. Copper armaments wrapped tight around his fore arms, down his shoulders, a good portion of his chest and back, and some on either side of his hips. The metal was loosely connected, leaving his elbows and armpits vulnerable, but allowing for expedient movement. The metal was polished to a bright shine that shone a dazzling pink hue of gold in the sunlight. Embedded into the armor was a delicate pattern of overgrown ivy to give the illusion of overgrowth along the borders of the armor. On the chest plate, treated with an alchemical process long forgotten by many and mastered by the few, was the Romma family crest in blood red metal; the visage of a vicious goat standing on its hind legs, mouth open, bleating at the sky, ready for an attack.

Harriot stood halfway down the dark hallway, gently feeling the weight of his pike in one hand, rolling it over in his clutched palm as if to remember the weight of it in every position. Before him were the gates to the coliseum, loving called the Rose Garden by the bloodthirsty Rockwell family that owned it. For many long years the Rockwells have hosted fights between mystical beings for spectators of all classes to see. It was only in recent years that human combatants were allowed to enter the ring. These fights were never tame, nor were they respected by the many nobles of the higher epochs of the Carrigo royalty, but still many of those royals came to see what unfortunate beast had been trapped by the Rockwells and spent a good deal of money placing beats on what beast would survive.

Harriot stood, his leather wrapped feet planted firmly in the dusty, blood stained cobblestone. His body was still but his mind was restless. He reached into the leather satchel on his belt with his free hand. He grabbed the single coin that lay resting there and slowly spun it between his fingers. As he toyed with it a great heat suddenly gathered just at his back.

“Are you thinking of me,” a woman's voice cooed from a far off place within the increasing heat, “or are you having second thoughts?”

The hallway behind Harriot, now removed of the knights squire having finished preparing for battle, suddenly filled with a scarlet burst of flames and smoke. Centered three feet above the ground, a swirling of vibrant flames and sparks suddenly appeared and grew larger, scorching the stone walls with a fiery black soot. From the center of the growing fireball a hoof attached to a woman’s leg, seductively smooth red skin but shielded by a thin layer of brimstone and soot, stepped forward into the hallway. The hoof clacked against the stone as another leg appeared and with it the visage of a cunning she-devil.

The demon was slender and tall, nearly standing at the full height of the tunnel. Her red skin was bare, but an conscious gathering of fine charcoal and black brimstone thinly covered her most vulnerable features. Her face was all edges, her smile severe and her eyes piercing yellow. The top of her head was that of a charcoal filled sconce, a great crown of unburnt red spikes, formed not of iron or steel but from her own flesh and bone, with a billowing fire ranging out from within the cavity of her head. From the fire a pair of twisted and curled horns, like that of a rams, grew out on the sides of her head. The two great points of her horns were capped with sharpened silver barbs that pointed directly forward, daring anyone to come closer.

“You can’t seem to get me off your mind these days, poor Harlot.” The demon spoke as she walked from the dying flames and around the knight to face him directly.

“Why must you call me that.” Harriot said.

The demon locked eyes with the knight and smiled with a ravenous hunger. The fire from her crown roared with a sudden intensity and her eyes, like horrible stained glass windows, grew brighter with a strange fixation.

“Is that not what you are, Harlot?” The demon tiled her head, watching his expression carefully. “Did I not pay you in kind for your services?”

“I feel it is I who has paid the ultimate price, and continue to do so.” Harriot said.

The demon smile grew impossibly wider. “Ah, but you continue to draw on my gifts, young Harlot. Even now, I feel you nipping at my fire as you ready yourself for battle.”

Harriot stood his guard, his pike still firmly in his hand, not allowing himself to be moved by her presence. He kept the coin in his hand and continued to rub his thumb against the engravings in the metal piece. The coin was warm, not only from his touch, but from something deeper. It gave him comfort, so much so that he could not draw away.

“You do enjoy my touch, sweet knight. Do not deny me.”

“I draw on your power now because you leave me no choice.” Harriot was firm in his tone, but as he spoke he felt the fiery magics within him slowly burning away at his defenses. “I enter this fight at your behest. If it were my choice I would not throw myself so willingly into danger.”

“Ah, but you always have a choice,” the demon hissed. She turned her back to him and took careful steps down the hallway towards the arena, her hips swaying sensuously as each hove clacked against the stone floor. Motes of ash and dust fell from her hind as she moved, a smoky trail of fire in her wake.

She looked over her shoulder at him with a wicked yellow eye and said to him, “You can turn away now, fair knight, and let the fight be fought without you.”

The demon’s yellow eye lingered on Harriot’s face, her gaze then flicked to his had buried in the satchel. The coin, still twirling in Harriot’s grip, suddenly became incredibly hot. The burning scorched Harriot’s hand and he flinched quickly pulling his hand out and away from the satchel, but coin did not drop. The coin, instead, stuck to his fingers with a molten bite.

The heat was intense on his nerve. Harriot held back a scream, tried to shake the coin free from his hand, but as he looked he saw the coin had turned to liquid metal and was beginning to fuse with his fingers. The heat was scalding, he smelt his flesh burning away, a white hot poker digging into his tendons, searing his bones. The sensation slowly beginning to crawl up his hand toward his wrist.

Harriot dropped his pike and fell to his knees, weapon and armor clanging against the stone. Harriot seized the burning hand with his other by the wrist, his teeth clenched hard trying not to scream. The pain was unbearable, but he would not give the she-devil such pleasure as to hear him suffer.

He held fast and hard, staring at his hand. The two fingers that held the coin just moments ago were now sickly black and charred. This skin there was no longer its natural shade of umber but rather an ashen purple. His knuckles were raw and boney, like that of some wicked beast. His nails, once trimmed and traced with gold were now long and sharp, the color of rotten flesh. The molten gold continued to eat away at his flesh, trickling down towards his writs, transforming his body into a nightmarish amalgamation of horror.

“ENOUGH,” he yelled.

The pain stopped and the coin fell to the ground, as if he had just dropped it from his palm. Harriot looked again and saw that his hand had returned to normal. He moved his fingers and the pain of charred bone was no longer present. He looked up and saw the demon kneeling before him, leaning down further from her great height to meet his gaze. The tips of her horns nearly grazed the tips of Harriot’s ears and he could feel the scorching heat that emanated from her skull.

“That is the price, Harlot,” she said, her face vacant. “You fuck me, I fuck you.”

“You.. You wench..” Harriot gasped for air, the pain still wrapping his memory.

“Not very clever, are you, Harlot. No matter, I do not need you for your mind, simply your muscle.” The demon gently placed her hand against the armor that covered his bicep and the metal let out a hiss as the heat of her touch started to sear at the metal.

Harriot reflexively stood up and away from her, grabbing his pike from the floor with practiced swiftness, never turning his back towards her. He held the weapon out at her in warning. The demon smirked and with a nod of her head Harriott’s wrist went limp and the axed blade of the weapon thudded down to the floor in his grip.

Harriot, despite his lack of control, steadied his stance against the woman.

“This will be the last task I do for you.” He said. The devil’s eyes narrowed as a smirk filled her boned face.

“If that is what you wish, Harlot. I only seek to serve you.” She bowed, her eyes never leaving his, and the ash and shoot that clung to her chest fell in great clumps to the ground. “Just bring me the piercing of the great bull and our...” She let the words linger in her throat, “.. Engagement will come to an end.”

Harriot’s eyes narrowed, trying to find any tricks the demon was hiding from him in her gaze. He only found the same lustful arrogance he had always seen, and her same great delight in his inability to see past it.

“It shall be done, and so with it this contract.” He said.

The demon stared a moment longer, still bowing at the knight, then in a blink of an eye she was gone. The hallway was once again empty and the only trace of the demon was the black soot that remained on the ground and on the ceiling of the tunnel from where her fire had burned.

Harriot regained control of his wrist and like a rubber band the strength returned to him and the pike shot up, pointed at the empty space before him. Harriot’s muscles ached from the sudden release of tension. He realized that every muscle in his was tensed in her presence, and now that he found himself alone once again he let himself relax.

He looked down at his left hand, normal again as if what he had seen and felt was only a nightmare, but he realized he had drawn a fist unknowingly. He released his grip and saw within it the golden coin, still warm to touch, worn and faded with time. Inscribed with the same long forgotten phrase of a dead language, the same worn shape of a silhouette of some dead leader of a civilization long fallen. The gold piece, not unlike any other, weighed heavy in Harriot’s hand.

The gate rose with a noisy repetition of massive chains against iron cogs. Harriot stepped out into the sunlight and was greeted by the brash echo of a coliseum filed with roaring spectators. The white sand beneath his feet was soft, uneven, and blinding as the sun sat directly overhead. The terrain had not been picked for combat, Harriot realized, but for absorption of blood.

“NOW! BEAR WITNESS,” a great booming voice rang over the coliseum with a wicked snarl, “OUR BRAVE CHALLENGER APPROACHES!”

Another great roar came from the crowd. Harriot stood squinting, trying to grasp the size of the arena around him in the harsh light. It was wider than he imagined. He had never attended an event at the Rose Garden out of principle, but now he had regretted that decision for lack of tactical knowledge.

“YOU KNOW HIM AS THE GOLDEN KNIGHT OF CARRIGO, THE UNYIELDING HEAD OF THE RAM, THE MOST HANDSOME WARRIOR IN ALL OF THE REALM.”

Harriot recognized the voice, although he was embarrassed he hadn’t realized sooner. Through the amplification of some spell, he recognized the voice of the announcer to be the elder lord of house Rockwell, Lord Thelonius. A gnarled stump of a human, often confused for an elder dwarf in which time had been most unkind to. Many believed his terrible visage to be the result of some necrotic spell to keep him from dying, but his only rebuke to such accusations was that he had a bit of elf’s blood in him but not enough to preserve his youth.

“MAY I PRESENT TO YOU, OUR NEWEST GUARDIAN OF THE ROSE GARDEN, SIR HARRIOT ROMMA, KNIGHT OF THE RAMS, PROTECTOR OF THE CITY OF GOLD.”

The crowd roared once again and with it came a scattering of rose petals from the edges of the coliseum. Some spectators, Harriot had heard, thought it fitting to throw petals out onto the battle field to bless the warrior they wished to see win. The only image Harriot could imagine with this act, though, was the act of laying flowers on the graves of the fallen.

Harriot tightened the grip of his pike and walked forward towards the center of the battlefield. The crowd continued to cheer before they were cut off by some unseen conductor.

“Sir Harriot,” Lord Thelonius’s voice grew a decibel softer but still roared above the din of the crowd. “You enter the Rose Garden to face a wicked beast found roaming the Bogs to the East. My sons fought long and hard capturing such a beast…” a great silence took hold before the bodiless voice continued in a low grow, “.. Just. For. You.”

Harriot stood unmoved. He gave no signal that would betray him. The booming announcer voice did not continue. The crowd was silent, the air heavy, waiting for a response.

“Aye.” Harriot let his voice ring from his belly. “I have come to slay your terrible beast.”

The crowd roared again. Although Harriot felt a deep unease standing in the den of monsters, he allowed the projection of glory that others had imbued in him to shine through. Harriot smirked in his practiced way and let the crowd go wild as he let admiration ease his nerves.

“Very well.” Although there was no face to see, the Lord announcer’s words held a sinister glee as he spoke. “Then pray, dear knight, let us see the prowess of your blade. Deliver us from the evils that fester here in… THE ROSE GARDEN!”

The announcer’s voice echoed harshly against the massive stone walls of the coliseum, mixing and loosing it’s harshness as the crowd grew with thunderous cheers.

Five gates all around the outer edges of the arena opened up. From each a massive warrior stepped out, armed to the teeth with iron plate armor and fire forged weapons. Harriot’s body tensed with action. He turned and saw each warrior enter the arena. Before Harriot could realize what was happening, a horn pierced the air with a commanding cry and each warrior charged forward, their weapon poised on Harriot.

Harriot spun on his heels, kicking up sand has ran to meet his first attacker. His heart was racing. He put his free hand to his chest and felt the coin there. Under his golden breastplate, beneath the wraps of gold and red cloth, the coin sat snugly against the center of his chest. It’s warmth ever present against his skin.

He spoke to the coin now as enemies drew closer.

“This was not part of our agreement!” He yelled.

“No,” the she-devils voice was present in his thoughts, “but this is the Rose Garden, sweet knight. I take it you have never been?”

The first warrior closed the distance and swung at the knight with his broadsword. The attacker was unhelmed and Harriot could see the blood-lust in the mans eyes. The sword came crashing down against the the pole of Harriot’s pike as he blocked it. The rage in the warrior was unyielding and the weight against Harriot’s block brought the golden knight to his knees.

Another yell came from behind. A second warrior with two daggers outstretched.

Harriot rolled on his knee and using the weight of his body arched the pike out in a large circle. The surge of power pushed the broadsword back and out of the hands of the first attacker and Harriot sliced the warrior’s exposed neck with the tip of the pike. The warrior fell flat as Harriot moved with the momentum of his spin to meet the man with daggers.

The second attacker was quicker to react. The axe blade at the end of the pike cut through the air just in front of the criminals chest. Harriot let the momentum of the swing bring him back to his feet and rose to face the man. The dagger armed warrior stood at the ready, his dirty face carefully watching Harriot’s movements.

“Experienced fighters?” Harriot said under his breath.

“Carrigo’s most desperate criminals. Probably.” The demon’s voice whispered in his mind. “How much do you think they’ll get paid if they lay waste to you, Harlot?”

The man with daggers saw his moment and acted while Harriot listened to the demon’s words. The man took aim and flung a dagger at Harriot’s head.

Harriot swung wide with his pike has he turned to dodge the incoming attack.

The man met Harriot in his sidestep and plunged his dagger into the knight’s exposed side.

Iron pierced deep into Harriot’s muscles, he felt the sharpened blade scrape against his hipbone at the man twisted the weapon deeper into his side.

Harriot screamed in pain and drew power from the coin.

The heat grew intense and bright, as bright as the wound from the dagger, but then that warmness quickly enveloped the entirety of Harriot's body. Harriot felt the fire come to light within him. The flames tickled at his bones, coursed through his vein's, and turned his vision hot red.

The man with the dagger was still enjoying his attack with a vengeful smile, but the man realized too late that something terrible was happening. The toothed grip of the dagger sunken deep into Harriot’s side suddenly came loose. The man pulled the handle away and looked in shock as the entirety of the blade was gone. All that remained was a melted stub of raw iron slag.

Harriot gripped the man by the throat with his free hand. The smell of burring flesh filled the air between them. The skin around the man’s throat sizzled and popped from under Harriot’s grip. The man began to whelp and scream, trying to pull away Harriot’s hand but Harriot’s dark-copper skin was too hot to touch.

BANG!

The head of a massive war hammer hit the center of Harriot’s back plate armor and sent the two men to the ground.

Harriot released his grip to catch himself as the man with daggers fell and clawed at the burns around his throat, his screams now inaudible gasps. Harriot continued to draw on the intensity of the fire within him to quickly recover.

He rolled into a kneel as another hammer came down hard against the sand, just barely missing Harriot’s legs. The golden knight jumped back on his feet and saw that two more brutes had closed the distance, each wielding mighty sledges against him.

Harriot’s pike was half buried in the sand five feet away, between him and the two men. The brutes stood smiling at him with toothy grime crusted grins.

Feeling the fire within him still burning, Harriot rushed at the two with arms wide. His legs were hot from the flames within, he could feel the amplified power of his calves dig into to the sand and force him forward with unworldly speed and strength.

The two brutes could not move faster than than Harriot. The golden knight rammed his arms against each of their chests, knocking them both on their backs into the sand.

Harriot glided to a halt. He looked back and saw three combatants downed, one dead. The fire within him still pricked his senses, heightening them so much that the crowds roar had become a deafening scream that pierced his skull.

Harriot focused and scanned the perimeter of the arena. There were five combatants at the start, but he only saw the four.

A hand appeared from under the sand and grabbed Harriot’s ankle. The hand was covered in green scales and the tips of each finger had a wicked claw that tore through the leather wrap on Harriot’s right foot.

The hand clenched at the knight’s ankle and with a surprising force was was pulled out from under him. In an instant, Harriot hit the ground hard and the air was knocked out of him. With it, the fire ceased to burn in his body.

Out of the sand, attached to scale covered arm appeared the face of a man, but his features distorted. His eyes were narrow, and each pupil was a slit of black against a milky green iris. His nose and mouth had merged together to appear as a terrible maw filled with two great fangs. He was hairless and disfigured, his entire face and body made up of scales that plated his skin like armor.

The man, his grip tight on Harriot still, slithered out from under the sand, showing his fangs in a primal threat, and faster than Harriot could perceive, the man’s fangs came down onto Harriot’s wrapped leg in a vicious bite.

The pain was incredible, but venom quickly entered his bloodstream and the pain faded into a dull throbbing. Harriot kicked at the man, but his leg only reacted in slow, rag-dollish flails. The grip of the man’s bite was unyielding.

Harriot raised his fist and brought it down hard against the head of the beast. The fangs sank deeper, and although there was no pain, Harriot feared for the worst.

The man released his bite and hissed at Harriot. The man rose more from under the sand and his long, snakelike neck appeared. The man’s torso was slender, like some deformed weakling. A sparse gathering of bones and limbs, like a weathered scarecrow at the end the season. This was no man, but an abomination.

“OUR LATEST DISCOVERY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.” Lord Thelonius’s voice pierced the air once again, booming and proud.

“DISCOVERED IN THE MYSTIC GLADES TO THE EAST, HUNTING MAN AND BEAST ALIKE FOR SURVIVAL.”

The scaled, deformed creature was now standing over Harriot, its long snake like neck raised and hovering over Harriot as the man’s body stood at full. Its clothes hung loosely to his serpentine body, threating to fall from his slender frame.

“WITNESS, THE ABOMINATIONS OF MAN KIND: THE WERE-CREATURES OF THE MYSTIC BOG!” The crowd was a mix of gasps and screams.

Harriot looked up and saw the other living men on the battle field were starting to transform.

The man with the daggers was sprouting slick, black feathers from his skin, a process that looked incredibly painful to the man. The whites of his eyes filled with blood then quickly to a shade of black. His arms twisted and grew into massive wings that flapped hard against the sand, spraying fine powder into the air. The pants and belt around his waist dropped revealing crows feet, ribbed and hardened into black flesh. The ends of his legs spread out into mighty talons that raked at the sand with malice. The man’s face elongated and from his mouth a massive beak with a sharp hook sprouted forth.

The burns around the man’s neck had rendered the skin useless and so a rung of pale white human flesh remained. The burn looked like a white collar against the oily black feathers of the crows massive body.

The two men with sledges picked themselves up from the ground and as they did their bodies bulged and ripped against the leather straps of their armor. Both men grew several feet taller, their muscles swelling to massive proportions as their skin became more coarse and hairy as an animals coat. Both men’s legs turned to hooves like that of a satyr, toes curling up and into one giant hoof. Tusks grew from the mouth of the man on the left while sharp horns grew from the crown of the man on the right.

The man with the tusk continued to grow more rotund. His armor ripped under his girth and matted white and brown hair became visible across his body. The man with the horns became more bullish in his features, his eyes narrow and snout elongated.

Harriot’s heart sank in his chest. He had missed it, so focused on the visage of a bull that he had not realized that one of the men sported a piercing in his septum. It was only when the transformation was complete did Harriot see it: the ring of the bull.

Harriot tried to rise from the ground, but the snake beast struck his head against Harriot’s chest armor with a loud hiss. The impact knocked the knight back into the sand. The crowd gasped.

Harriot tried to roll away from the creature but the poison in his leg was spreading faster up than he had realized. Nearly his entire hip was numb and he could feel his heart rate quickening, moving the poison faster through his system.

The snake man stepped forward, observing Harriot, bearing his fangs at him. The bull and the boar approached, the sledges in their hands appearing as mere craftsmen hammers against their massive bodies. The crow flew up into the air with a wicked caw, circling around the stadium where several terrified screams echoed out.

Harriot drew upon the coin once more.

Nothing happened.

No heat, no fire, no response came from his draw upon the power therein.

“Sorceress of Decanza, I call upon you!” Harriot shouted as he drew his hand to his chest.

Still no response.

The boar approached Harriot and grabbed him by the scruff of his chest. Harriot was lifted into the air like his weight was nothing to the beast. The boar lifted him so his gaze met Harriot's. The boar’s wild eyes still held a semblance of thought, and through the oblong pupils Harriot saw pure hatred festering there.

The boar dropped his hammer and with his human hand curled into a fist, punched Harriot in the chest and sent him flying across the arena.

Harriot landed hard against the sand and slid to a stop. The impact of the punch had caved in his armor and the ram on his armor appeared as if it was peaking out from a cave rather than readying a strike.

Harriot did not move. The crowd around him was calling out his name. Some in a desperate plea of revival, others in a mocking tone.

“Young Harlot.” A soothing voice rung louder than the crowds at Harriot’s ear.

Harriot opened his eyes to behold his mistress but she was not there.

“Help….me..” Harriot’s voice was weak, the air still knocked free from his lungs.

“But I have, sweet boy.” The voice rang out, “You have already drawn upon my fire once this fight.”

“..Again..”

“Ah.” Her voice was motherly and conceding, “I cannot win all of your battles, my love. This is your task, not mine.”

Harriot raised his head, his neck muscles growing weak as the poison drew more of his strength away.

Through the blur of his vision he saw the bull moving toward shim him. The creature threw away his hammer, sending it circling into the air behind him. He stopped and knelt down in the sand and picked up Harriot’s pike. He sharpness of the weapon’s blade and continued to approach.

The creature’s gait made the earth tremble as he grew closer to Harriot.

The knight allowed his head to slump back into the sand. The sky above him was bright blue. A beautiful day. Harriot pictured his sister, standing in the crowd, consumed with grief as she watched her brother die. She was not proud enough to stand idly by, he thought. He imagined her now running to the lords box begging, no, demanding that the fight be ended at once.

She had been right. He knew this all along but had tried to deny it. It was a trick, a vicious one. Perpetrated not only by the young prince of the Rockwells but also by his vile benefactor. There would be no grater joy to the Rockwell family to see the young knight so violently slain in their show of horrors. A show of power, an embarrassment to the family Mannon, a threat to those who dare challenge the violent menagerie the Rockwells hold.

But Harriot knew the real price of entry to this game. Harriot cursed his arrogance, foolishly thinking he could outsmart a devil.

“Ahh,” the demons voice sent chills down Harroit’s neck. “You see it now.”

The footsteps of the beast drew closer. The crowd grew louder with a chant. Harriot tried not to hear either.

“So what will it be, young Harlot? Your family’s pride, or your life?”

Grunts and growls grew closer as Harriot laid helpless in the sand. A dark shadow blocked out the sun as the beast stood over Harriot and looked down at him.

Harriot’s lips were purple, his complexion gray lacking it’s normal luster. His entire body was drenched in sweat. The bull let out a mocking snort and drove the pole of the pike into the sand beside him.

The beast reached out and grabbed Harriot by his breastplate with both of his massive hands. The fine black fur that coated the beasts human-like knuckles delicately fastened themselves on each half of the breast plate. Then, with a deep grunt, the beast tore apart Harriot’s armor like tearing a piece of cloth. Harriot was immediately exposed, his golden armor torn in half and discarded.

Harriot fell hard against the sand once again, unable to catch himself. The poison had ceased all function in his body. The wraps of red and gold were now all that lay between him and the world.

The bull grabbed the pike and turned his back to Harriot. He circled in place, observing the crowd. A cacophony of cries and jeers loudened as the creature raised his arms in pseudo-triumph.

“Last chance, my sweet knight.” The she-devil’s words were hot in Harriot’s ear.

The bull turned again towards Harriot’s broken form. The beast threw back his head and released a terrible roar from his belly as he raised the pike above his head.

Harriot’s voice was weak and coarse, but just as the weapon’s blade was arching through the air, the knight sputtered out:

“A bargain.”

A flash of searing light, then blissful silence.

Harriot awoke alone in his bed chambers.

His mind was foggy and his vision blurry. He tried to move but everything was sore. Every muscle ached as he tried to lift himself. He felt like one giant bruise.

Pain was good, he thought. That meant he was alive.

Harriot grimaced through the pain and sat up in his bed. It was incredibly painful, but he did it despite it all.

He looked around, his vision still adjusting.

The room was spacious and gilded with some of the finest furniture gold could buy. The great oak floors were covered in fine red carpets and the walls were adorned with fine art and large fixtures of polished brass. The sheets of his bed were fresh despite his injuries and it appeared to him that someone had been tending to his needs. There was a fresh jug of water sitting on his bedside table. Harriot snatched it, his throat burning from thirst, and drank the entire jug as quickly as he could.

Harriot felt a wave of pain ripple across his body. He threw the empty jug to the ground in an involuntary spasm of pain, causing the jug to clang against the floorboards. Every muscle in his body tensed. Harriot barely held back a scream. The pain subsided for a moment and Harriot threw off the bedsheets.

Lying limply in the downy feather bed was Harriot’s bruised and beaten body. Harriot would have guessed that this was the corpse of a dead man, but every scrape and cut sent flashes of pain to his brain as he scanned them.

There were several new scars across his bronze skin and nearly a dozen wraps of white gauze covering the deeper wounds. The leg in which the snake bit him was sickly black and red. Corrupted veins, dead from the venom, stood out against his skin like long black strands of death running up his leg. There were several scrapes against his thighs and torso that he did not remember receiving during the fight. Harriot imagined that some great rake had come down on him several times in an attempt to tear away his flesh from bone.

A large bundle of gauze had been wrapped several times around him, completely covering his torso. He ran his fingers against the cotton and felt the cavity of a deep scar beneath the bandage. It was not painful, but it was hot to the touch.

He pulled at the gauze and unwrapped it. The dried blood was thick and sticky as the layers came off, but it was only when all of the cloth was removed could he see the total damage that had been done.

Running diagonally from the top of his right pectoral all the way down and across his left ab was a deep cut that looked to have sliced through skin and muscle, all the way down to his bone. The skin around the wound was pale and taught, like that of a scar. From the feel of it, the wound was obviously fresh, but it did not look recent. It looked already like it had healed, albeit poorly.

What was most odd, though, was that incision of the wound, the scar itself, was filled with gold. The two parts of flesh did not meet in the middle, but were instead stitched together by a long line of metal gold. It looked like the work of a blacksmith, his wound the casting for a rapier. It did not hurt nor did it feel unnatural. As he sat hunched over he noticed how the metal flexed and bent as he did.

The gold was apart of him.

Harriot ran the tips of his fingers against the strip and felt that all too familiar burn of fire held within.

“Do you like it?”

Harriot looked up and saw that the she-devil was sitting in a cushioned chair across from him in the far shadows of the room. As she spoke the flame of her mantle came to life and illuminated the room around her.

The Sorceress of Decanza, the damned temptress of fate, appeared different to Harriot. Her demonic outline was still the same, the giant horns on either side of her sconced head, her burning yellow eyes and sharp, glinting smile. But she was no longer nude, nor was her skin the same deep crimson as it had been every time before. She sat in the lounge chair, legs crossed, in some of Harriot’s finest clothes. She wore a ruffled shirt with golden inlays around the collar and sleeves and a pair of trousers made from fine cotton, dyed a deep indigo. She was taller and more robust than Harriot. The clothes were not tailored for a woman, let a lone a woman of her height and measurements. The clothes she wore were tighter and more form fitting against her curves, far more suggestive than her normal thin layer of soot and carbon.

The fire light from her skull danced across the exposed skin of her arm and Harriot saw that her pigment had taken on a darker hue. She no longer appeared as bright red as the poppies in the field, but now her skin resembled a dark red clay dried by the fire.

Harriot straitened himself to face the devil directly.

“What have you done to me?” He asked.

She smiled.

“You really are an ungrateful wench, has anyone told you this? Not even a thank you?”

Harriot moved to stand out of bed, but the pain in his leg was still too great. The poison had done its damage.

“What have you done to the coin!” Harriot demanded.

The demon stood from her chair and slowly approached the bed. Her hoofs thudded against the carpets and the fire of her skull charred the wood beams as she crossed beneath them.

“I used it to save you, young Harlot. At your request.” She said.

Harriot’s mouth filled with rage and denial, but as he thought, he realized what he had done. The anger of his fire putted out and his face grew slack.

“That’s all right, sweet knight, I fought on your behalf, as you, and preserved that precious honor of yours. I think you would have been quite impressed with yourself.” She sat on the bed beside him, her heat still present through Harriot’s frayed nerves.

“I even finished your task for you.” Her fiendish fire stained glass eyes glanced down at Harriot’s hand. He looked and what was not there before appeared in his open palm: the ring of the bull.

Harriot held it dully, his eyes empty.

“Now,” the demon said, “deliver it to me.”

Harriot looked up at the smiling she-devil. Her hands were folded primly in her lap, her gaze holding wicked anticipation.

Harriot raised his hand and offered the small metal piercing to her.

“No, no.” She said, shaking her head. “Deliver it.”

Harriot looked at her in confusion but before he could think he felt the golden scar across his chest searing at his skin. A great blast of fiery pain pierced his chest as Harriot screamed and threw the small metal piece across the room.

Harriot looked down and saw that the golden metal in his chest had turned molten but instead of flowing down into his lap it had instead melted in and through his torso. The pain was unimaginable, Harriot felt as if he was melting in half.

He clutched at his chest, trying to scoop the metal out and away from his body. His fingers grabbed at the edges of the scar and to his surprise, he felt his grip slide into his body. From the sunken scar where the metal had once been there was now a gaping opening emanating light from within him. He ran his fingers again against his burning scar and the bones there felt loose.

Harriot grabbed at either side of the open wound and found that his body was malleable. The ribs beneath his skin had transformed and were no longer made of muscle and blood. He pulled at it and pried his chest open, the burning sensation slowly dying away as he did as more light poured into the room.

Harriot opened his flayed chest wide and within it he could see a hellish room doused in fire. Within him, behind the golden scar, there was now a chamber surrounded by torrents of flames and smoke. Harriot watched in horror as the radiating heat from the fiery depths of Hell licked his knuckles as he held open his chest cavity out towards the she-devil.

Sweat was trickling down Harriot’s face, his eyes wide in horrific disbelief. This felt like a surreal nightmare to Harriot but the heat of the flames and the throbbing aches of his bruised body kept him painfully aware that this was not some fantasy but his reality.

The she-devil, having not moved, held out her fist and offered the ring of the bull to Harriot once more with a patient smile.

Harriot snatched the ring. The fire raging out of his chest cavity suddenly burned more eagerly against his scared flesh. Acting not out of instinct but fear, Harriot threw the metal ring into the fiery chamber beyond his chest. When the metal passed though him, the two halves of his torso swung shut, pulling free from his grip and slamming closed with a wet thud that knocked the air out of Harriot. The heat and light of the fire ceased to be and the wound in his chest became nothing more than a gold-crusted scar once more.

Harriot sat panting in his sheets. Sweat ran down his skin, sizzling into steam as they came in contact with the strand of metal in his chest.

Harriot whispered under his breath,

“You’ve made me a monster.”

“No.” The demon whispered back. “You’ve only become what you’ve always been.”

The door to Harriot’s chambers burst open and Melody rushed into the room.

She was dressed in her house clothes and wrapped in a nurses smock.

“Harriot,” Melody said. “You were screaming. What’s -”

Melody stopped mid sentence and looked on in horror at the sight of the demon sitting by Harriot’s side. Melody tried to speak, tried to scream, but no sound came from her mouth.

The demon gave a flick of her wrist and the door slammed shut behind Melody.

Harriot tied to move, tried to do something, anything, but the pain coursing through his body washed over him, completely debilitating him. He sat helpless in the bed staring at Melody.

“Harriot.” Melody’s voice was coarse and cold.

“A pleasure to meet you, dear sister.” The demon stood as she spoke, towering over the frail looking woman.

“I am no sister of yours.” Melody spat.

“Ahh,” the demon smiled and looked at Harriot, then back to Melody. “I understand your confusion, but your blood is my blood, which makes us family.”

Melody turned her piercing glance to Harriot. “What is she saying?”

Harriot opened his mouth to speak, but his tongue made no sound, his voice box turned to silence.

“He chose to spare himself,” the demon spoke to Melody, ignoring Harriot. “Rather than die a dishonorable death, he turned to me to save him. This has been a common deal of ours for quite some time. And not just a deal for himself, but for the lives of many other Mannons, as well.”

Harriot lowered his eyes.

“Harriot, what does this monster mean?” Melody asked.

“Do you think it a coincidence, sister, that you sick mother miraculously recovered as your dumb Harlot of a brother flayed the the banshee of Cicero? Or how your Uncle’s business suddenly tripled its yearly profits in less than a month after your darling brother disappeared for a trip just weeks before? Or how the young knight’s heroics simply seem to keep piling up, more and more as of late, as if suddenly he has a direct line to every source of drudgery that dares to turn its wicked head in the direction of Carrigo? Have you not considered anything other than coincidence?”

Harriot did not dare to look her sister in the eyes, but he felt her gaze burning holes through his soul. He wanted to explain everything, how everything he did was for his family. But as the demon spoke he faced the quiet truth behind all of his actions: he had done it for himself. He had been arrogant enough to think that he could betray nature, bend will and the powers that be into his favor. He had thought he could wrestle with the wiles of a wicked creature, but now, bandaged, bloody, and bruised he saw that he had let the trap shut down around his neck the moment he entered an agreement with the devil.

He was in too deep now. There was no saving him.

“Your family sigil serves the Mannon’s well,” the she-devil circled Melody, watching her closely as spoke. “You’re too damn proud to see when your ‘better than everyone’ attitude has driven you off a fucking cliff.”

“You will not speak to me-” Melody yelled at the devil, but before she could bring her full fury down onto her, the fiery beast flicked its wrist at Melody and turned her into a ball of flames.

“MELODY!” Harriot screamed. He threw his body out of bed and across the room at the mass of fire where Melody stood screaming.

The roar of the fire, spiraling and circling, completely engulfing the flailing woman, roared with a horrible sound that nearly drowned out the wails of Melody’s pain and horror. Harriot crawled towards her but the heat was too intense. He tried to clutch at his sisters heals but each time he did the fire nipped at his fingers, the heat searing his nerves before he could do anything.

The Sorceress of Decanza stood starring into the flame. Her deep bronze skin glistening against the flames, her eyes and smile burning with a deep fascination. Before long, or what felt like an insufferable eternity, the demon flicked her wrist again and the flames shrunk into nothing, freeing the girl from her fiery prison.

Melody dropped to the floor. She was not burnt, but her appearance had become horrible. Her amber skin was now a midnight blue. Her soft and delicate skin now twisted and pocked with bumps and boils. Her perfect curls were now long, wicked strands of coarse, matted black and sticking out from the crown of her head were two black horns, like the horns of a goat.

Melody laid curled on the ground, sobbing, clutching at her body, trying still to put out the flames that were no longer there.

Harriot stared and watched his sisters hands move against her gown, and saw how they had grown long and horrible, her nails like that of a witch.

Melody stopped screaming and looked up from the ground. She scanned the room, tears running from her eyes, and her gaze met Harriot’s. Harriot looked at her sister in horror.

She was not burnt nor disfigured, but something far more worse had befallen her. Looking into her glowing amber eyes, Harriot beheld the reality that he had created. He knew the risks, but now he saw his sister cursed with the blood of a demon; a mortal undone of the blessings of creation, a bastard of all that is right and holy.

Melody had been transformed into a tiefling.

Melody looked down at her hands and at her arms. She felt her face, how the bones beneath her checks and chin had stretched and become more pronounced. She felt the spirals of charred bone that emanated from her head. She ran her pointed fingers through her matted hair. She came to a slow realization with what she had become. She started to weep.

The she-devil knelt to the level of Harriot and Melody and looked at him with a smug satisfaction. Harriot grabbed and flailed at the monster, but he was too weak. He banged his fists against the floor boards hoping the wood would give out beneath her and send the whole building toppling down on top of the three of them. The floor did not budge.

“Our last engagement,” The she-devil spoke. “Bring me the golden helm of Tiamat.”

As she named the item, the streak of gold embedded in Harriot’s chest burned white hot. Harriot screamed.

“Deliver it to me,” the demon continued, “and our business will be settled.”

The demon reached down and grabbed Harriot by his face, her bony fingers clutching his jaw, and lifted him into the air as she rose back to her standing height.

“Fail me,” she brought his face close to his and Harriot could see his reflection in the fiery windows of her eyes, “and your entire bloodline will suffer the same fate as your sister for all of eternity, until I get what it is that I want.”

Harriot’s legs dangled in the air as he held onto her wrist to keep his own weight from snapping is neck.

“Do we have an understanding, Harlot?”

“Yesh, I- I undershtand.”

“Good.” She smiled. “Rest well, my sweet brother.”

The she-devil smiled and kissed Harriot on the check before vanishing in a cloud of charcoal and soot. Harriot dropped heavy to the ground, stars blurring his vision as he hit the wooden floor.

Harriot laid there with his head buried in his arms, trying to wake from this terrible nightmare. He looked up and saw his sister, Melody, still cursed with demon blood, and the rest of his family standing in the doorway, looking at the two of them in stunned silence.