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Memory, or perhaps instinct, guides Vizaeth’s exhausted steps as he stumbles into the tavern with the taste of Pharaun’s flesh on the back of his tongue. Lost months ago he was brought here as a gift, a thing of beauty and an object of pleasure, granted a public affection—now he’s alone with a stomach full of mangled innards and traces of the Demonwebs clinging to his skin.

Vizaeth finds the same seat he claimed when Pharaun led him here and collapses into it. Red mist coils faintly from his arms, full of ghostly spiders. His hair hangs lank and bloody around his face, and he tucks a tangle of strands behind his ear with a shaking hand. A clot of gore catches under his nails. He flicks it to the floor.

“You look like you’ve had a worse day than me,” a voice beside him slurs. “Fancy a drink?”

It’s a young male. Hair shaved into webs on the sides, dark makeup smeared over eyes and lips, an outfit that speaks of expense and taste gone spiralling down the drain over the course of the evening. He’s pretty. He’s paying.

“Yes,” Vizaeth says.

His name is Zeth’rinn, and that’s as much as Vizaeth can get out of him, other than that he’s trying to get as drunk as possible as fast as possible and doesn’t much care who accompanies him on his descent into debauchery. He buys them wine and beer and hard liquor with a seemingly bottomless purse, flinging shiny coins across the bartop like he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that in this part of Eastmyr that’s an invitation for a throat-slitting.

“S’with all the blood?” He asks eventually. Vizaeth examines the backs of his hands, stained and crusted with red.

“Tore my way out of the Demonwebs with it,” he says.

“Rough.” Zeth’rinn takes one of his hands and bends close, squinting to examine it before bringing it to his lips with a sloppy smirk. “Want help cleaning up?”

Pharaun’s remains churn in his gut. The loss is like shards of glass in his oesophagus; like dead spiders in his lungs. The only thing he wants to bathe in is acid. The only thing he wants to do is forget. His head is thick with grief and sour with wine and he lets Zeth’rinn kiss him in the hopes it will scour the taste of metal from his mouth.

A blurred blink later they’re in the alley behind the tavern. Vizaeth’s head hits the filthy wall as Zeth’rinn pins him up against it, sucking clumsily at his tongue. They rut against one another for a while, breath heavy, and then Zeth’rinn drops to his knees. Vizaeth doesn’t stop him. Hands fumble to draw aside the stained and ragged skirts of his robes, unlace his leggings, pull out his cock. Lips and fingers play over him and something stirs, distant and dull.

“Too much wine, or not enough?” Zeth’rinn asks, after a minute or so of licking does little but coat Vizaeth’s cock in spit.

“Switch with me,” Vizaeth says. Choking on something might help; might force the blood and the bile back down his throat. He kneels—falls, jarring, scraping his shins—as Zeth’rinn stands, and gropes a belt undone and trousers past slim hips—and uncovers a blasphemy.

“Og’elend-vith!” he snarls, flecks of blood flying from his teeth. He shoves Zeth’rinn away, scrambling to his feet.

“Rude,” Zeth’rinn says, making no move to cover himself, to conceal the disfigured cunt that marks him out as a traitor to all Lolth’s sons should be. He’s grinning, as if Vizaeth’s disgust amuses him.

“Is this a game to you?” Vizaeth bites out, and the grin becomes a bark of intoxicated laughter.

“Sure,” Zeth’rinn says. “Why not? Come play with me! I make an excellent toy.”

A soul can only endure so much taunting. Vizaeth grabs him by the shirtfront and hurls him to the ground—that Zeth’rinn doesn’t fight it only makes his fury burn more feverishly. Such a creature; deceitful, entrapping, half-transformed mockery of flesh—such a creature as Vizaeth might have been, if he’d been weaker. If that had been his fate, he’d have fed himself to the Underdark rather than endure it.

They scrap amongst the half-rotted food and broken crates littering the alley, drink-heavy limbs flailing and scratching, kicking up dirt and dust, sending fat, red-eyed rats scurrying for safety. Despite being smaller, Vizaeth manages to pin Zeth’rinn down; manages to draw his belt knife and bring the edge against the ruby-laden choker that wraps the traitor’s throat.

“Now you’re talking!” Zeth’rinn exclaims with manic glee. He arches into the blade and puts his hands back between Vizaeth’s legs—his eyes light up at finding more hardness there now than the earlier efforts of his mouth conjured. “See? This is much better!”

“You,” Vizaeth pants out, the fight having left him breathless despite its brevity, “are a mistake.”

“Correct me, then.” Zeth’rinn tugs at his cock, pulling it towards him. His nails scrape the shaft. “C’mon, I know you want to.”

What he should put into that foul gash is his knife. Carve out the affront, send this soul to the webbed abyss he so recently clawed his way back from—let it see how Lolth likes its frivolity towards the roles She’s set down for Her children. Spitting up a clot of blood thick with webs, Vizaeth drops his knife and forces himself into the blasphemous hole.

It’s tight. And wet. He gags at the feel of it swallowing him—it’s like plunging his bare hands into a pile of weeks-old entrails. Is this what all those boys felt when he had Xunhrae’s body? Is this what his brother endured to be close to him? How could they stand it?

But then, they were fucking a woman. He’s fucking a parody.

“Harder,” Zeth’rinn says, rocking his hips. Vizaeth grips his waist tight, blackened nails gouging crescents into violet skin. “Yeah, like that.”

He manages a half-dozen thrusts, each of which Zeth’rinn takes like a whore, before his cock slips out, arousal failing. Only natural that it should, when what he’s doing—what he’s doing it with—is so unnatural. He can taste nothing but blood again, Pharaun’s ghost clawing at his insides, trying to get out. Pharaun would do a better job of this. He’d know how to put this mutilated mannequin in its place.

Vizaeth thinks of that, makes himself Pharaun as much as he can bear, and gets himself hard enough to do what must be done.

“Hah, yes—fuck!” Zeth’rinn gasps. He’s touching himself, somehow not sickened by the swollen overgrowth of clit that stands up stiff above the hole Vizaeth is trying to fill. “More, Mistress, please; I’ve been good, I’ve been so good—”

Mistress. Beneath Pharaun’s gore and the shadows of the Demonwebs, Xunhrae cackles with delight. The crack of Vizaeth’s hand across Zeth’rinn’s face rings in the alley, followed by a sharp inhale and a long, moaning exhale.

“Oh, do that again,” Zeth’rinn begs. Blood flavours his words, spilling from his split lip. Tears, black with eye makeup, streak his face, but he’s still smiling, a rictus grin, and still touching himself.

Vizaeth hits him again. Ruts into him, falling out and wrestling his wilting cock into the dripping hole again and again. Mistress. Mistress.

“I’ll kill you,” he hisses through his teeth. “False widow. Cross-dresser. Traitor.”

“I make a pretty boy though, don’t I?”

“Things like you look best on an altar.”

“All the better to worship me.”

Vizaeth snatches up the discarded knife. “When I’m done, I’ll split you from cunt to crown. Then we’ll see how pretty you are.”

“Fuck,” Zeth’rinn groans, eyes fluttering shut as, to Vizaeth’s horror, he comes. The slick meat of his walls clench and spasm around Vizaeth’s cock, which shrivels in revulsion. His stomach roils and he rears away, twisting to all fours as he retches, blood spattering the dirt, strings of thick, gory spit drooling from his chin.

By the time he’s recovered, Zeth’rinn is at the far end of the alley and staggering away. Vizaeth clenches his fist around the knife—his knuckles ache, his wrist shakes, and he drops it.

Which is when he sees the glimmer of metal in the dirt. Coins. A scattering of coins thrown at him by the departing homunculus. Vizaeth snatches them up and hurls them after Zeth’rinn with a howl, but he’s gone, around the corner, out of sight, off to deceive some other faithful failure. Bile pools on Vizaeth’s tongue, a wash of grief and regret. He slumps, head heavy, and gathers up the knife. Presses the point to his gut. Moves it lower, hovering over his cock, soft but glistening with the secretions of the hideous orifice he forced it into.

No. Pharaun will want it, once he’s back; will want him, all of him, whole and unharmed.

Vizaeth claws up the wall until he’s standing. Wipes his mouth on his sleeve. Zeth’rinn. He’ll remember that name. Discover which house it belongs to, which family sired such a wretch, and if they won’t slaughter it they’ll reap appropriate reward, and Lolth will glut herself on heretic blood.

Pharaun’s remains slither inside him. Vizaeth presses a palm to his stomach.

All vengeance in time. First things first: he has work to do.