The Vessel

They went to the Great Hall.

The plague victims lay in rows on the straw, groaning in the darkness. The air was thick with the smell of death.

Elian walked through the rows. Malphas walked beside him, invisible to the dying eyes of the peasants.

"Choose," Malphas whispered. "To seal the pact, to empty your heart of its old master, you must fill the void with something new."

Elian stopped.

A boy, no older than sixteen, lay on a pallet near the hearth. He had the same blond hair Elian had once had. He had the same fearful, innocent eyes. He was dying, but slowly.

Elian knelt beside him.

"Father?" the boy rasped, mistaking Elian’s robes for a priest’s. "Am I going to heaven?"

Elian stroked the boy’s hair. "No."

He looked up at Malphas. The demon nodded.

Elian placed one hand on the boy’s chest and one hand on his own. He began to chant. Not the summoning spell, but the Binding. The inverse of a healing prayer.

He didn't draw the sickness out. He pushed his own darkness in.

He poured the guilt, the shame, the horror of the torture chamber, the memory of the fire—he pushed it all into the dying boy.

The boy’s eyes went wide. He convulsed. He screamed, but it wasn't a scream of physical pain. It was the scream of a soul being crushed under the weight of sins it didn't commit.

Elian felt lighter. He felt the heavy, suffocating blanket of conscience lift from his shoulders. He felt the hollow space in his chest open up.

Malphas stepped forward. He placed his hand over Elian’s heart.

"Empty," Malphas whispered. "Perfect."

The demon didn't enter Elian in a cloud of smoke. He simply leaned down and kissed him.

It was a kiss that tasted of ash and old iron. As their lips met, the shadows in the room rushed toward them. Elian gasped, inhaling the darkness. He felt Malphas dissolve, pouring into him like hot wax, filling the void where his conscience used to be.

The boy on the pallet gave one final, gurgling rattle and died, his face frozen in a rictus of terror.

Elian pulled back. He took a deep breath.

The air didn't smell like rot anymore. It smelled like opportunity.