Mido turns the silver mask over in her hands. Scrapes soil out of the impressions with a thumbnail. She takes a drag of her nepeta leaf and stares at the inside of the mask. She could smell it still, the metal. Smell it as fresh as the day it was first pulled over her face. When she had followed the Jak brothers into Northrend she had snuck away from the campsite, just before they reached Conquest Hold. She dug a small hole and tucked the mask away. Thralls and grots had no possessions.
The mask had been her companion, all those lonely years. Her confidant; privy to all her anguish and triumphs. So she buried it. When the Grin returned to the old world she recovered it.
It rested in her hands, content to watch her now. The hyena’s exaggerated maw grinning omnisciently up at her.
Virroth spit. The liquid slowly sank down into the red soil of the blasted lands, thick and crimson. His words echoed in her ears, disdainful.
About healing….
Too caring…
Fettered by morality…
Sleep would not come to her that night. She laid in her bed, trying to smother the dizzying swell of thoughts and emotions as they seared into her mind.
The room was small, and dark. There were no windows. The floor was made of dirt, and they would huddle together. Press their backs to one another as they fell asleep. The Bell Girls. That’s what they were called. Lepers. Their bodies covered in heavy robes and bandages, silver masks covering their faces. And always the bells, the little tiny bells hanging from their hair.
She remembered watching as they would pull a girl out of the room. Sometimes she would return, and sometimes not. Fat Dena said that when the girls didn’t return it meant they had died. That they were feeding them to Ghazrilla. Wispy Jashi said they had been promoted further in the priesthood, had become zealots, their initiations inked in blood.
Mido had once been pulled out of the room. She didn’t remember much. The dark room. The zealots were crowded around her, chanting relentlessly. Then days of sickness, darkness. The other girls patted her back as she wretched in the corner.
When she had gotten older, when she had initiated into the priesthood as Jashi said, she knew what happened that night.
Ghazrilla was their god.
But Farrak had been built on many souls. The sand was saturated with blood. That was what held the empire up. Not the pillars, not the walls. Not the guards and not the sentries. The bloodsand.
She had stood, chanting with the others. Watching the Bell Girl flail helplessly on the altar. How old had she been? Maybe twelve? She thrashed wildly through the night. Sweating, crying. And then it happened, her darling little voice was gone and the roar began to quake up from her lungs. An unsettling noise with no context in a world of feverish chanting or nebulous garment. The liquid spewed from her mouth, upwards, floating like smoke in the wind, trailing about the room, listless at first before it seemed to form together. Translucent, but somehow ochre. It watched the priests as they chanted, amused, calm. And just like that it was gone. Slipping away under the door.
The girl died.
High Shadowcaster Jumba thanked her. Placed his hand tenderly on her silver brow. The sun would rise over the empire again.
Today is the Day of Blood. Year of the Basilisk.
She had forgotten those nights. She had only remembered, with a vengeful contempt, the dirt floor and how cold it could be. She knew only that she would never sleep on the dirt again. When the Mok’gun and the Gol’kosh formed she thought she knew what she had to do. There was money to be made. Things to be gained. How she wanted things, things that were her own. Her very own. Extravagant things. Jaguar pelt rugs and jungle flower scented perfumes.
The Lak’gora would help her achieve this end, she thought.
And then the cold, and the sickness again.
And so she stood, naked, staring at the hut in the swamp and screaming. Snakes and crocolisks watched her from the shadows of reeds and vines. She screamed and screamed. And finally the small, withered figure of a troll woman slipped through the beaded curtains.
“You been trifling in things that shouldn’t be trifled with.”
Many nights on the frog venom. Vomiting until her throat was sore.
“That’s the demons coming out of you.”
And fever.
“You got holes in your soul, girl.”
Mama Vioux held her under the murky, rank swamp water. Held her there until her lungs filled up with water and algae, and no matter how she thrashed Mama Vioux kept her there, her grip like a vice around her throat.
“A nice man with the good magics saved you from your pathetic life, and you go about practicing the bad voodoo like some ungrateful little witch. But I’ll tell you this now, girl, it won’t stand. You’ve been warned, and here you’ve been healed. Keep it up and your soul will fill with so many holes that one day, one day you’ll be walking along. Smoking your nepeta leaf, squinting at the sunlight. Or maybe you’ll lean over to lover boy and whisper something real sweet like into his ear. Maybe the only light on you will be the torches in the tavern, maybe the only sound the songs of victory, sang drunk like they’s supposed to be.”
The smoke made her nose burn. Made her eyes water. Mama Vioux smelled like rotting meat, but somehow sweeter.
“And your soul’s going to collapse under the weight of your sins. And then where will you be? Where will you be?”
Mama Vioux’s hands were soft with age, sagging and mottled with liver spots and scars, dyed yellow and green by countless years of grinding herbs. But how they could grab your jaw, so tightly you thought your teeth were going to split.
“Nowhere is here.” She jabs a finger against your heart.
She had only spoken to the other Mok’gun days ago. Had confessed her sins. Swore to them that they would save the souls of the Grin. Was it just coincidence that Virroth had come?
He must be some beast, lurking about under the realm of men, right under their feet, his maw twitching madly as he sought out the scent of good souls, his long claws tearing the dirt away in mad ecstasy so he could lock his jaws around the ankles of practitioners and drag them down into his world. The world of soil, the world of dark and rot, the world they gave the dead to.
Mido crushes the nepeta leaf cigarette against the head of her bed, flicking the remains to a corner of the room. Slowly lowers her head down into the frame of the mask. Holds the cold metal there. And she laughs. The hyena laughs too, laughs so hard tears seep from its eyes.