Objo preened, feathers as magnifit as hers required stant upkeep. She bed through the dark blue plumage with her hands, the hooked talons tipping her fingers pressing each feather to lie ft and glossy. The delicate white speg on the plumes made a starry sky when she spread to her full wingspan, a proud twenty feet. Though a harpy now, she had not always been sinally a bck barn owl before the transformation, she was, in her opinion, the most beautiful of her harpy sisters. Though her sister Ooi, the resple quetzal decked in emerald greens, was a close sed in terms of beauty. She scowled at the thought of her pseudo sister. Though ninally a hunter she had adapted to the role well, being almost as aplished as Objo. A fact she frequently tauhe older woman with.
Now acolytes to the chthonic god of vengeanemia, the rites performed upon her body for her assion to priesthood had been an agonizing but necessary sacrifice. The golem body her god had formed for her had required Objo to personally extrad pce each of her ans withihick paste of volic ash f the earthy struct. It had taken her a brutal seven days to plete. A beautiful number, Nemia had cooed, cradling the hatg in her magma encrusted fingers, after her new daughter’s rebirth.
Objo sat tucked in the branches of a thorned acacia, midnight shadows cast from the revelry below her feathered feet dappling her fad wings as the warm wind of summer whispered through the leaves like a promise. She watched the witches with sharp eyes as they danced below. Followers of Zsa Zsa, the piebald deer witch god, were holding their ceremonial rites, twisting and writhing around a massive bonfire, higher thaop of her tree. They tossed in handfuls of powdered minerals, turning the fmes brilliant blues, greens, and magentas as they whirled, light from the fmes glinting off the gold of their jewelry. Objo watched dispassionately, a vicious smile twisting her lips. Soon they would be her prey.
The witches practiced kin killing, ritualistic sacrifice of their own family members to the crazed god as a form of tribute, supplig the god for riches and power. As kin killers, they were barred from the afterlife, leaving them only the realm of the living, a pce they sought to stay as long as possible. They besought Zsa Zsa the witch-mother, to increase their loy, to keep them for just a little longer from their iable fates as lurking ghosts doomed to travel the earth in agony. Their kin killing s are what drew Nemia’s acolytes to them, Objo and the other harpies fulfilling their sacred duty of punishing those guilty of the most egregious of crimes, of which kin killing was taramount.
After capturing the damned, Objo and her sisters would bring their prey to Nemia, through the obsidian tunnels beh the dormant volo Urtel, depositing them before the god for her brutal judgment. Objo paused in her grooming, watg carefully for the witch that would be her quarry tonight. The ohat would el the god and thus doom herself. The witch was already drenched in blood, her teeth red with it as she bared them wildly, her grin widening past human limits as Zsa Zsa eled through her. Gold jewelry decked her every limb, king as she spun. Soon. Soon they would lear.
She eyed her current mark, a witch with a gloria of vibrant red hair braided plicatedly over top her head, long strands breaking free from the to billow like fmes, glossy bronze in the firelight. The witch ughed wildly, lips bloodied from sipping the sacrificial wine, passed to her by the ’s witchmother in a heavy chalice. The viscous liquid spilled down her as she drank deeply, seeping into the bodice of her dress, staining it a dark burgundy.
She twirled away, spinning round and round her yered skirts rippling around her legs, the plicated steps of her dance bringio a sudden stop in front of a bound, wide eyed girl, red hair as bright as her own, her features so simir to the witch’s. A knife appeared ich’s hand, bronze and jagged. She held it up to her mouth, lig the bde, her lips parted in a violent grin, fmes dang in her eyes.
Without warning she sshed down, slitting the girl’s throat in a single fluid movement, a spray of blood spttering across her face. A cry went up from the gathered, somewhere between a cheer and a wail. They colpsed around the sin girl, shoulders swaying like waves as they tio dance, lifting her body on their collective shoulders to y her atop the fire, now a funeral pyre for the newly departed. The witch killer watched with a grin, something predatory and eager. The fmes burned brighter still, leaping high with a roar.
She colpsed on the ground, body spasming, eyes rolling ba head. The other witches gathered around her, whispering, ting, arms around each other as they swayed rhythmically. The witch stopped spasming, body so so still. A twit her fingers, and she came back to animacy, standing up, something different iahan before, something are moving her limbs. She smiled and it was a different smile, something older, colder, and far more dangerous. She held up her hands to her cheeks, pointer fingers at the edge of her smile, fingers csped in a fist, thumbs up pointed in the air, stretg her grin wider still, beyond what a human’s lips should. The witch-god had e to join, summoned by sacrifibsp;
Objo watched the proceeding, eyes narrowed in disgust. This was not her first time watg the summoning of Zsa Zsa, and it wouldn’t be her st. I never failed to disgust her, the disposal of kin for personal gain, the most egregious of crimes she brought to judgment by her god. The details of the ritual varied to , but the e was always the same. A kin member sin and the murdering family member possessed, the goddess embodying the sacrificer, granting them loy, for a while, until another sacrifice was required, to tihe life loaned.
She would wait a while more, until the witches were fast asleep and the witch-god departed,, before slipping into their midst and snatg her prey. The loy granted would not keep death at bay, not from anod.
