Small flickering embers were drifting down from the heavy timber cross beams in the ceiling down into the piles of storage of the cellar. “This is a bad place to be” Mistrial said, and Heath retorted, “we have literally everything we need. I’ve been in situations like this before, let me tell you, the thing to do right now” she slotted her broom in the lid of the cauldron, ”is summon something really crazy and hope for the best.” From a curio cabinet they brought out sticks of blue and white chalk and Mistrial put down the shape of the summoning symbol and Heathcliff added her own complications, resulting in something that looked really nicely arcane. They cast salt and said a few prayers, then Heath kicked open the booze chest and drew out two glowing bottles of liquor, tossing one to Mistrial. Inside a little white horse fetus juggled around in the liquid. Heath clinked the bottle in cheers, then yanked the cork off with her teeth and started chugging, her neck muscles working up and down, and alternated drinking and spewing it to the four corners of the earth, chanting demonically and working herself up into a tizzy. Mistrial took a sip and her stomach and esophagus coiled and crowded up to shut down everything in desperate effort to keep whatever it was out. “Can’t do it,” she sputtered. Heathcliff finished her bottle and smashed it over the cauldron, menacing her with the jagged edge, her eyes feverish and feral, “I am a very different person when I’m at the business of magic, you better find it in you to drink that. I am already far gone and I will spill your belly open across this sigil and give it to the demon to eat.” Mistrial was a little taken aback but gave her college best but the bare whiff of fumes sent her gagging, “Can’t. Can’t do it.” Heathcliff yanked the bottle out of her hands and punched her up the gut, sending her to her knees. Then stood over her, chest heaving, “this is going in one way or another,” she said, sucking back spit, but her voice was not the same. Then shoved Mistrial flat on her back and threw her knee with all its force down onto her neck, pinning her her to the ground and stopping up her breathing, and turned back to grab her outside thigh and hauled it up and around, pulled away the dress and underwear, and rammed the bottle up her ass. Choking out into starry-eyed darkness, with burning liquid gurgling its way up into her colon, Mistrial wondered where it all went so horribly wrong, and, adding to the humiliation, twisted in the way she was, she saw in a dark space among the flickering sprites of flames springing up all around, she saw the Canary wide-eyed, hidden beneath the furniture, hands splashed across her face in mute torment. Mistrial stayed dead awhile, while Heathcliff shouted profanities in evil languages, contorting with whatever demon possesses someone to forcibly boof their pal. A chemical heat was rising up from her bowels when she sensed the approach of whatever had Heathcliff ravening in the inferno: a subtext: a flickering order in the chaos. Something hidden, that was approaching fast, but had always been there, and was ever-present. The coming of Astaroth. She sat up, acutely mortal, doomed thing, as it flowered around her, and its flowers flowered, and on and on into distant canyons of sight and mind, speaking words that saw through her, spoken in the language that wrote the world. The fires outside the summoning circle were nearly complete in their saturation of the underground, and something dying away inside told Mistrial she needed to secure the Canary before things got really bad. She grabbed the kid out from under the cabinet by a leg, and was bitten all up and down for her effort, but it didn’t hurt. Then the ceiling above lurched and gave way, so all without the summoning circle and its orb of safety was roiling flames, the glyph underfoot surged brightly with white and blue magic. Then a voice that sounded like the universe unzipping commanded them to give up a sacrifice for the power and favor of Astaroth. Heathcliff, her eyes glowing red, came for the Canary and Mistrial stuffed her back with an arm that was suddenly sturdy and rough like iron. The Red Witch came at her again, this time with the broken bottle and slashed open her forearm, but again there was no pain. Mistrial flipped the Canary aside and took on that wild fiend of her desire unafraid. Wet with stinking liquor and blood they grappled, Mistrial gripping the wrist with the bottle and holding it far out away from her as she brought Heathcliff down to the ground, then slid over the arm, isolating it, twisting the wrist and hand contrariwise until she got the good squeeze that wrung free the weapon. She kicked it out of the circle and into the fire, and Heathcliff mounted her clawing up her neck. She reared back and grabbed Heath’s hair and hurled her over, skidding her across the circle on her face. Mistrial couldn’t believe how powerful she was. She stood over the defeated Heathcliff, her tattoos glowing with the same light as the sigil, and Heathcliff coiled around like a snake, but this time her hands were up, shaking, and the fury was gone from her, and she begged in tender supplication, genuinely surprised by this surprise altercation, “I’m sorry,” Heath said, her jittering fingertips climbing up Mistrial’s pulsing thigh, up her body, to hold her face, a sudden blissful bedroom look coming over her demeanor. But stopped short, holding just before the kiss, and began blowing air into the back of Mistrial’s throat, like she were blowing her up like a balloon, and oddly enough Mistrial felt the breath going up into her head, blowing her up bigger and bigger, like a cosmic bubble, it honestly felt amazing, she looked back and saw her image, beautiful and eternal, blown back into the waiting embrace of Astaroth. “Wait a second,” she pushed Heathcliff away. “That’s my fucking soul!” screamed Mistrial in the great screaming all around. REMEMBER ME, AS YOUR TRUE GOD, the voice commanded, NOW ENTER INTO MY CAULDRON AND BE PURIFIED. “Sorry! Had to!” Heathcliff chimed, clamoring into the cauldron. There being no place else to go, Mistrial followed her in and collapsed into its dark steel belly falling right into the surprised Canary who had evidently been hiding in there. The lid sealed tight overhead. They waited, in the dark, with bated breath, a close, suffocating heat. The sides were getting hotter and quickly touch was unbearable. She drew the Canary in to try and keep her off the hot metal, but soon, with their whimpering rising to screams, they were all scrambling to heap themselves upon the other, fighting like dogs to escape the searing confines, mad with pain and fear, then lost to the agony of glowing hot iron, resigned, and curled inward into mummified torment.