The black liquid poured into his mouth in one smooth motion. Not a drop spilled. His throat worked as he swallowed, once, twice, then he lowered the empty vial slowly.
It slipped from his fingers and rolled across the marble with a brittle clink.
For a full minute, nothing happened.
O'Malley stood there.
Breathing.
Eyes closed.
As if savoring it.
Medea folded her arms loosely beneath her chest, watching with patient amusement.
"Well?" she prompted lazily.
O'Malley inhaled.
"It tastes…" He swallowed. "Like pencil lead. Metallic. Bitter. It feels… strange. Like inhaling black smoke while drinking. It's cold. Surprisingly cold."
As he spoke, Malcolm noticed it.
A flush crept across O'Malley's cheeks.
Not embarrassment.
Heat.
The veins at his temples darkened, spreading like ink beneath his skin. They thickened, webbing outward along his neck, down his hands.
He swayed.
Just slightly.
The apprentices exchanged uneasy glances.
"I'm fine," O'Malley insisted quickly. "I feel… warm. Fuzzy. There is power, it is moving through my—"
His body jerked.
A sharp convulsion seized him mid-sentence. His knees buckled and he dropped heavily to the floor, palms slamming against marble.
Gasps broke from the apprentices.
"I am fine," he repeated, though his voice had deepened half a register already.
He hunched forward.
Another convulsion.
Harder.
The air around him began to shimmer.
Heat radiated outward in tangible waves. Malcolm felt it against his face, drying his eyes. The scent of ozone intensified, mixed now with something more primal, more animal.
O'Malley groaned.
His back arched violently.
His spine elongated with a sickening sequence of cracks, vertebrae shifting beneath skin. The sound was not subtle. It was wet, grinding, structural. His shoulders broadened, ripping against the fabric of his suit.
Black smoke spilled from his mouth.
Not breath.
Smoke.
It poured from his nostrils, his ears, the corners of his eyes, swirling around him in tight spirals. The air thickened with it, dark tendrils rotating as if pulled by invisible current.
His clothes began to disintegrate.
Not tearing.
Crumbling.
As though reduced to paper and then ash, fluttering away in dry fragments. The smoke coiled around his waist and hardened into a crude loincloth, wrapping his growing form.
He grew.
Rapidly.
Muscle bulged beneath his skin, stretching it to its limit before it thickened and darkened. His arms lengthened grotesquely, fingers widening into massive hands tipped with blackened nails.
His face contorted.
His jaw extended forward with a grinding pop, teeth reshaping, sharpening. Lower canines lengthened into tusks that pushed past his lips, curving upward like bone daggers. His nose flattened, nostrils widening. His brow jutted forward.
His screams deepened into something less human with each passing second.
Eleven feet.
At least.
Broad enough to blot out the green flames behind him.
Steam rose from his body in heavy plumes.
Malcolm's mind raced despite the terror squeezing his lungs.
The heat.
It must be metabolic. The energy required for this kind of biological restructuring would be immense. Cellular replication at that speed would demand extraordinary fuel. He was almost amazed O'Malley had not simply detonated from the strain.
The transformation ended with a final, brutal snap.
The creature that remained bore no resemblance to the man who had entered the chamber.
An orc.
If one had to borrow from fantasy texts and pulp novels, that was the closest approximation. Towering, monstrous, skin thick and gray-green beneath the steam. Veins like cables across boulder-sized arms.
It stood there for a moment.
Then it collapsed.
The impact shook the marble.
Silence followed.
Malcolm stared.
The High Priest.
Dead.
Disfigured and dead.
Dead.
The word repeated in his mind with hollow insistence.
Then the creature inhaled.
Deep.
And roared.
The sound detonated through the throne room, slamming into Malcolm's chest like a physical blow. Dust shook loose from the ceiling. The apprentices scrambled backward instinctively, dragging themselves away across the floor.
The orc rose onto its feet.
Guards stepped forward from the shadows, black smoke swirling beneath their hoods.
Medea raised a single finger.
They froze.
She stepped toward the beast instead.
A playful grin curved her lips.
She approached far too close for comfort.
"Hansel?" she called lightly. "Are you still in there?"
The orc answered with violence.
Its massive arm whipped backward in a devastating arc aimed directly at her skull. The force behind it was enough to crater stone.
It struck nothing.
Only air.
Malcolm blinked.
She had been there.
Now she was not.
He turned his head wildly, searching.
She was behind them.
Walking casually past the apprentices as though she had merely strolled across the room.
"Watch," she said lightly. "And learn your place."
Her hand lifted.
Purple Lumen condensed between her fingers, coalescing into a blade. Long. Sleek. Dark metal infused with pulsing violet energy along its edge.
She stepped forward, placing herself between the apprentices and the orc.
She inhaled deeply.
"Oh how I have missed this."
The air thickened.
Ozone saturated Malcolm's lungs. His hair began to rise from his scalp as though charged with static electricity. His skin prickled.
The orc lunged.
It moved with horrifying speed.
Far faster than any human could. The ground cracked beneath its foot as it propelled forward, fist swinging downward with bone-shattering force.
And she vanished again.
Not teleportation.
Movement.
So fast Malcolm's eyes could not track it.
Only a streak of violet remained in her wake.
She circled the orc in blinding arcs, purple trails weaving around its bulk. The beast turned, swinging wildly, each strike fast enough to decapitate a normal opponent.
She blocked.
Parried.
Deflected.
Each clash rang like steel against steel, sparks exploding outward in bright showers. The impact of the orc's fists shattered sections of marble floor, pulverizing stone into dust.
She laughed.
Not strained.
Not pressured.
Delighted.
The orc roared and lunged again, swiping in rapid succession. It was impossibly fast for something so large. Its strength was catastrophic, each missed strike splintering pillars, carving gouges into stone.
And she treated it like butter on warm bread.
Effortless.
At one point she flipped backward, landing sideways against a pillar halfway up its height. Her body clung there with impossible grace, one hand braced casually against the stone.
She tilted her head.
"This was fun," she admitted. "But I have better things to do."
She launched.
The pillar exploded behind her.
Not cracked.
Exploded.
Stone fragmented outward in a violent shockwave that rattled the entire cathedral above. The chamber trembled as debris rained down.
She became a storm.
Up.
Down.
Left.
Right.
The purple trail around the orc thickened into a luminous cage of motion. Malcolm could not follow individual strikes anymore. Only flashes of impact, bursts of violet light carving across gray flesh.
Then she appeared.
Directly in front of the apprentices.
Back turned to the orc.
Perfectly still.
She brushed an imaginary speck from her shoulder.
"Never forget," she said softly. "I am the devil."
Behind her, the orc froze mid-motion.
"And I am always watching."
The beast attempted to turn.
It did not finish the movement.
Its body split.
First along one diagonal seam.
Then another.
Then many.
Dozens of clean lines opened across its massive frame, and in the next breath it fell apart into steaming chunks. Flesh separated into precise fragments that collapsed into a grotesque pile of meat and bone.
Silence reclaimed the chamber.
Medea glanced back briefly at the remains.
She lifted the blade and dragged her tongue slowly along its edge, tasting the blood with idle curiosity.
The weapon dissolved into black smoke.
She tapped a finger against her chin.
"Now," she mused lightly, "who will replace my High Priest?"
Her gaze drifted across the kneeling apprentices.
"Ini," she said softly, pointing to one.
"Mini," to another.
"Maini."
Her finger hovered.
"Mo."
It stopped.
On Malcolm.
His heart dropped into his stomach.
"You," she said simply.
She flicked her free hand.
O'Malley's briefcase rose from where it had fallen, floating smoothly through the air into her grasp. She extended it toward Malcolm.
He hesitated only a fraction before crawling forward to take it with shaking hands.
"Hansel placed everything inside with my instruction," she said. "You should have little difficulty finding what I require."
Her gaze shifted to the remaining apprentices.
"You will obey him," she told them coolly. "You are my dogs. My hounds. Mundanes with delusions of importance. Remember that."
She smiled.
"Run along now."
Malcolm rose unsteadily, clutching the briefcase against his chest. The others scrambled to follow.
He forced himself to walk.
Not run.
Not yet.
At the threshold of the hall, he glanced back once.
Medea was already ascending the steps toward her throne. Her figure moved with slow, feline grace, violet streaks in her hair catching the green firelight.
Behind her, the steaming pile of what had once been O'Malley lay in pieces.
Malcolm swallowed.
He had not believed he could fear anyone more than death itself.
He had been wrong.
He was terrified.
His hands would not stop trembling.
His lungs still burned with ozone.
His ears still rang with the echo of that roar.
And yet beneath the terror, beneath the nausea and the bone-deep awareness of how easily she could unmake him, something else coiled quietly inside his chest.
Captivation.
Devotion.
The terrible desire to prove worthy.
He stepped into the corridor beyond, the cathedral swallowing the echoes behind him.
The devil had chosen him.
And the night was far from over.