Daemon of Karabakh

"We are cursed by powers that not even God knows about," the letter ended.

All this finally came to Sister Sevana, who, with cum-splattered lips, labored night and day in her little office at the Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts. Nuns have their own curious grapevine, as it were, and from the beginning, because of her trafficking with invisible things, the investigation into the Daemon was assigned to her, marked as a subject of great concern. Sevana knew that it was no creature of earth but regarding its actual nature, where it came from, even how it could be defeated, she could not learn at first. In vain she consulted her tarot cards (the Kissaneh deck); made use of books of necromancy and the black arts; consulted her familiars who all declared themselves ignorant of the beast, saying that the Daemon was altogether alien to this world, beyond the knowledge of even astral spirits.

Then Sevana recalled of that queer, old delphic ring which she had inherited from her mother, an Ottoman witch, one of many who perished in the 1915 Genocide. The ring had come down from ancient Urartu, had once been the property of the night queen Qubadli herself. It was made from a single ruby, a smoke-filled, smoldering gem. Within it slept a spirit, one of the elder elementals from the great dawn of the earth, long before evolution had caused mankind to develop opposable thumbs and walk upright in the grassy fields of Africa.

From a rarely opened casket in her cell Sevana brought forth the ring, making such formulations as were needed for awakening the ring's spirit. When the ruby stone was held above a copper vessel, crafted by the priests of ancient Ar (a religion that flourished in the Armenian Highland during 5th-3rd millennium BC), filling it with burning sandalwood and amber, the nun began to speak. The spirit answered, speaking in a crackling voice that was like the dancing of flames. It told her that the Daemon of Karabakh, in its proper form, was invisible to the human eye, but manifested itself because it still needed claws and teeth that could hold, kill and cut out the spine of its victims. It lived for the marrow and fluid found in those particular bones. The elemental told her of the only method by which the Daemon could be destroyed. Even to Sevana, a scholar who had dedicated her life to the study of arcane powers, found these disclosures as a wellspring of worry. For many reasons, she now decided that the mother superior's attempts at exorcism would continue to fail. But the elemental had sworn that there was no other way forward except with the plan that it had laid before her.

Brooding upon all that she had been told, the sister sat in the dark of her office on one warm summer night, preparing herself. Before Sevana had been a nun she had been a lover of the man called Manfred Trinzcek, a Byronic figure, who had vanished one night in the Bernese Alps under mysterious circumstances. She wished for his council now, for the cards had warned her that her assistance in defeating this fell thing would be required soon.

The air was still save for the whispering of the earth elemental dripping down her thighs. She didn't really like cunnilingus with creatures of mud and clay, they were far messier and rarely obeyed orders. The last time it had taken her an hour of scrubbing to get the bewitched soil out of her pubes. It was the type of spirit, though, that was rarely a total pervert with her body. But today it was worth the mess and she smiled softly at the lumpy thing and quietly murmured, eat me, "utum yem."

Her eyes flickered in the dark. The only light came from a dozen candles encircling the pentagram and chair that she sat in. Lifting her long hair, she closed her silver eyes as she felt the slurping mud-lips run up and down her skin. With a small sigh, she dropped her hands against her nipples, her fingertips making them hard at the touch, raising goose-bumps. She cupped her breasts, feeling their weight, rubbing her nipples against her palms, drawing them to a razor's edge. She groaned as the elemental made obscene tar-pit noises, primitive as proterozoic oral sex, lightly biting her lips to stifle her first moan.

She could feel how deep the spirit had entered her, filling every nook and cranny of her cunt, every millimeter of its surface focused on pleasuring her. She closed her eyes, slowly tracing a path from the slightly luminous mud up to her breasts, her thighs parting wider as the spirit pressed in. All of her skin tingled, she felt chills of swamp mire and muck oozing across her clit, settling into her very core. She moaned at the contact, every nerve coming alive with the gentleness of this otherworldly touch, the caress of her fingers.

Her breathing became erratic, the elemental circled her clit. Whimpering, she felt the spirit rub the hard nubble of girl-flesh, her hips rolling. The room shook with her gasps, building to a crescendo, her body enthralled by powers beyond human understanding. Arching her back, she felt waves spreading through her like the Biblical flood that landed the Ark on Mount Ararat. Her cry turned wild and debased, her cunt convulsing around the phantasmal tongue-like muck.

A knock came on Sevana's little office door.

The earth elemental stopped its sucking, turning what Sevana assumed to be its startled head toward the door. The nun was frozen in the act of cumming, her back arched, her breasts hard and pointing in odd directions. It had been less than 48-hours following the death of Sister Lusine. The Director of the Matenadaran, an elderly man who indulge the funny, little nun who seemed to live in the bowels of the institute day and night, together with the mother superior, Armineh herself, stood patiently waiting for Sevana to answer. The naked woman in the chair held her breath, cursing the fates for orgasmo interruptus; she could feel her own cum dripping down her thigh.

"Er, Sister Sevana-jan?" came the old man's reedy voice.

With a silver laugh Sevana pulled the door open and invited her unwelcome visitors to enter.

Armineh looked at the younger woman who stood humbly before them. She was dressed in an almost Byzantine nun's habit; a starched white cornette and black veil, a woolen belt and wooden rosary, an apron with hand-stitched designs of The Fall and Lilith tempting Eve to carnal sin. Unlike the mother superior's own spartan cell back at the nunnery, Sevana's office was literally overflowing with dusty books, parchments, half translated manuscripts, files on hundreds of different projects and subjects, all the tools of a scholar who spends her waking hours studying history and the artifacts the ancestors left behind. The floor was clean, the chair creaked loudly as the nun offered the seat to Armineh. There was, though, a slight smell of ... was that river mud? the mother superior thought. No. Probably just mildew from all these old books.

Sevana stared at the older woman sitting before her. She could feel the earth elemental swishing about inside her cunt and womb where she had imprisoned it for the time being. It wasn't complaining. Indeed, concentrating on what the mother superior was saying at the moment was becoming difficult. She squeezed her thighs slightly tighter, willing the spirit to settle down for the moment. She wondered what sort of sin orgasming in front of a fellow clergy member would fall under. She concentrated on staring at Armineh, in whose worn features and bowed head Sevana saw the ravages of exhaustive sorrow, terror and shame. God had refused to answer any of her pleas, indeed, the sky seemed an empty hole to Armineh now. She had come, however, to ask Sevana's advice and help in defeating the daemon.

"You, Sister Sevana-jan," the mother superior began once the two women were alone, "are one of the few nuns left in this world who can use the heathen arts of sorcery, the taboo spells which can destroy evil. Therefore, in dealing with this devil it may be that you shall succeed where all others have failed. I must warn you, it is not willingly that I accepted the suggestion of employing you in this matter, since it is not becoming for the Church to be known that it allies itself with pagan magic, even if it is being done in God's name, even if the spell caster is one of our own."

"O!" Sevana blurted out as the elemental found her g-spot, turning what was intended to be a smirk into an exercise of lip-biting. "You, er, don't approve of my m- m- methods?"

"The people are despairing," Armineh said, giving the younger woman a curious glance as if she saw clear enough what was happening but out of tact deferred from saying anything. "They hardly accept this war but now time is against us, lest the demon should kill again while I am here in Yerevan. The Bishop of Vanadzor and the Archbishop of Echmiadzin have been told of this plea and support us in this undertaking."

"Stop!" Sevana gasped, much louder than she intended, "that is, I mean, O! If it is in my power to rid Karabakh of this plague I shall do so. But you have given me a difficult task, one that shall bring many strange dangers with it."

"I have talked to the head of police in Shusha; all assistance that can be given to you shall be yours to command," said the older woman. "Police officers shall attend to your investigation, if you wish it."

Then Armineh, speaking in a low, broken voice, assured the heavily sweating Sevana that all doors, including those to the Aramazd Convent itself, would be opened at her request, that everything possible would be done to further the destruction of the evil.

Sevana, attempting to wrap up the interview so she could send the elemental back to the marsh from which it had come, finally said, "when will you return to Shusha?"

"This very night, as soon as I can have your answer."

"Well then, I shall accompany you back. I will not use the police, I think, for men tend to become nervous when faced with things they do not understand. Rather, pick out two of your nuns to assist me. Let these women be chosen for their courage and discretion: for by tomorrow night I hope to get to the bottom of this mystery."

"Really?" the mother superior said, a bit of animation crossing her face, though she still looked tired and worn.

"Yes, now please let me set my affairs in order and I will meet you upstairs in twenty minutes."

As the office door closed on Armineh she could almost swear she could hear Sevana hiss, "I am so fucking going to kill you for that, you little piece of shit!"

"What a strange nun," the mother superior thought as she walked through the basement of the Institute, "though no one can say her heart isn't in the right place. I hope she at least puts up a good fight."

III.

Twenty minutes later Sevana emerged from the dark still clad in her odd habit; on her index finger sat the ring of Qubadli. To arm herself she carried a curious Persian hammer. Upon arriving at Shusha after a three-hour mountainous car ride, Sevana found that the two assistants the mother superior had chosen for her, Sister Aras and Sister Argitchi, were stout, with forearms like blacksmiths, and, clad in their more traditional Apostolic habits, looked like they could have wrestled with both Jacob and the angel and bested both. The three began walking, taking a little-goat-path which ran through the trees.

Her companions were reticent, speaking briefly only when answering questions. This pleased Sevana; for she knew that they would maintain a discreet silence regarding everything that might occur. That whole afternoon they walked, while the sun sank in a well of blood among the twisted trees. Soon the darkness closed in upon them. Deeper they went into the woods. Even Sevana, the last mistress of sorcery in the Caucasus mountains, shivered a little at the thought of what was awake and moving about in the darkness.

However, they returned to the convent when the moon was high overhead empty handed. The building was quiet; all the nuns, save the eunuch boy from the village, had retired to their dormitory. The mother superior had left at sunset to Stepanakert to arrange for the burial of her aunt. Hearing this, Sevana said she had reason to believe the Daemon of Karabakh would return to the nunnery that very night. She told the boy of her intention to wait outside the outer walls so that the three women could catch it. She asked her two companions to accompany her in a tour of the building, so that she could get a sense of lay of the land. During the tour Sister Aras pointed out a certain window in the second story that belonged to their mother superior. Sevana remarked on Armineh's foolhardiness in leaving it open while evil was abroad. This, her guides told her, was what the older woman always did. On the windowsill they saw the glimmering of a candle, as if Armineh had returned from her journey and was now keeping her own late night vigil.

Asking her companions to rest under Armineh's open window the three women sat down to wait as the hollow-faced moon rose higher above the somber oaks, pouring a spectral mist down upon the leaden stone of the nunnery's walls. Far to the west Hale-Bopp glowed among the corpse-white stars. They waited hour after dark hour in the shadows. When the moon had finally disappeared from sight all was finitely quiet. Nothing moved. Sevana spent the time mindlessly toying with the ring of Qubadli on her finger, ready for that which the elemental had directed her to do. Toward dawn the candle sputtered in Armineh's window, as if it had burned itself out and the cell fell into darkness.

Nothing stirred in the lattice-like shadows, the slow night died, the sky grew pale with morning. Then, half an hour before sunrise, the thing fell upon them. From seemingly out of nowhere -- suddenly -- a glow of hellish light, flying like St. Elmo's fire, leaped from the forest gloom, sprang upon the three women where they sat, blinking in the early dawn, worn out from their night-long vigil.

As Sister Aras was borne to the ground, Sevana saw above them, floating in a sudden geyser of blood, the black, wolf-like form of the Daemon. Hunched shoulders with glowing yellow eyes, the wide ass and vaguely human tits, just as the mother superior described, was tearing at the woman's neck with serrated teeth. The nun did not cry out, only made a terrible guttering sound as she began to drown in her own blood. Swiftly Sevana laid the ring of Qubadli on the ground and broke the ruby with a single blow from the Persian hammer that she carried with her.

From the pieces of the shattered gem the elemental, roused from centuries of sleep, rose in the form of a queerly burning fire, thin as a candle-flame but taller than any mortal. Hissing softly in a crackling voice, the spirit leaped forward just as it had promised Sevana it would do in return for its liberation. It fell upon the beast with contempt, as the dark shape under it writhed about. As they fought the body of the Daemon appeared to melt before the two awe-struck women, to murkily change, to transform. Horrifyingly the thing took on the wavering shape of a naked woman, one burned by the orphic flame. The defiling blackness flowed out of her, swirling high into the night air, leaving behind it the nude, burnt-out, distorted body of the mother superior herself, Armineh.

The fire-shaped elemental continued to wrap itself around the nun, the woman's face melting away into a waxy nothingness. Now a great column of smoke rose up; Sevana and Argitchi both choked on the odor as of burning flesh intermingled with the beast's sex stench. Out of the smoke, above the hissing of the spirit, there came a single cry, like the voice of Armineh. But then the smoke thickened, hiding everything from view, save for the singing of the otherworldly heat.

At last the loathsome fumes began to lift, disappearing among the gnarled branches. The living flame rose up as well, stretching even further out until, twisting over and over, it made its curling way to the west. Sevana knew that she and the spirit had fulfilled their respective promises. It had now gone back to its remote, mountaintop from which the night witch Qubadli had first drawn it down in the time of Urartu to become a sleeping prisoner of her ruby.

What had become of the Daemon neither woman could say, there was no longer any trace of the body. With the help of the devastated eunuch, who had looked upon Sister Aras as a source of endless kindness, they brought the body of the slain nun inside. They told the nuns of the Aramazd Convent of Shusha that the Daemon had come upon the three of them in a mad rush, had slain Aras and gained the mother superior's window before they could call out for help, had then turned and sprung forth from the second floor, carrying poor Armineh in its maw. Sevana had exorcised the beast, which had vanished in a cloud of fire and brimstone, but sadly it took their mother superior with it.

Both their deaths, Sevana said, made them true martyrs; Armineh and Aras did not die in vain, she went on, for the Daemon would no longer plague Nagorno-Karabakh, nor bedevil the nuns of Shusha, since the exorcism she had used had come from the Catholicos himself. After that there were no more questions, since if the Catholicos, the head and the chief bishop of Armenian Church, had had a hand in crushing the devil then there was nothing more to be said, though the Sisters grieved for a long time for their fallen.

In time Hale-Bopp faded slowly away. It would not return to the visible skies again until the year 4534, enough time to prepare oneself if the Daemon chose to rise again as well. If, in fact, the comet had brought the terror that had consumed the mother superior then it was a completely different sort of evil than what Armenia and Azerbaijan had been waging upon each other, all in the name of holding onto a small plot of land. Unlike the comet, war does not wait for a whole 2537 years to resurface once it passes by, it is a constant that does not care if the veil between humans and the divine is paper thin or an insurmountable wall. War cannot be exorcised, only endured, regardless of what the prophet of the shadows might say.

Back in her basement office, locked behind closed door, Sevana continued to invite all that which could drive the living to madness into her arms, between her thighs; slipping her fingers deep inside as strange abominations roughly fucked her; causing the earth, the moon and the galaxies to explode behind her eyeballs from orgasm after orgasm. Arching her back into the arms of unnamable things, liquid fire fucks, her cunt shaking around the tongues of alien horrors, making her cum again; for the orgasms of the spirit world are nothing like the orgasm we possess while on this waking Earth.