by Adelaide Song on 2025-03-12.
Tags: sprint eminence non-canon
The workday begins by burning sixty pounds of diamonds.
Not for the first time, Dr. Amitha Sanmugasunderam watches her yearly salary literally going up in smoke, and wonders what her parents would say if they could see her. The only consolation she has is remembering what they would’ve said if she’d stayed in academia.
On first glance, it would be easy to mistake her office for a chemistry lab, what with the canisters of explosive gas and the fume hood. The piles of books scattered everywhere don’t exactly help the impression either, although some of their titles might raise some questions—hard to say what most labs would want with a binder simply labelled PRACTICAL DEMONOLOGY. It’s even harder to imagine why they would have chained an assistant’s ankle to the wall, or why she would be naked.
Said assistant is busy applying a set of oddly-elaborate temporary tattoos to her body. She’s covered in a decimal labyrinth of arrows, lines and integers that looks like a dementia patient’s drawing of a butcher’s diagram. The floor around her is littered with both sheets of spent transfer paper and elaborate, arcane symbols drawn in liquid chalk.
“You mind turning the radiator up, Ami?” Egret asks, planting yet another sticker onto her arm. “Getting kinda breezy in here.”
“Diamonds not hot enough for you?” Amitha points the blowtorch in her direction for a couple moments, before turning it back to the rapidly-disintegrating pile of diamonds. “Also, I told you not to call me that.”
“You’re casting spells and shit on me and I don’t even get nickname privileges.” Egret moves to fold her arms, before realizing she might smudge the designs. “Also, you literally see me naked.”
“Not actually a benefit. Are you done yet?”
Egret groans. “Nearly.”
“It’s for your sake, not mine. Things are going to do move fast once I’m done with the offering, and I don’t have the budget for a do-over.”
“Sure, sure. What’s the worst that happens, anyway: I die?”
In response, Amitha holds the blowtorch closer to the rapidly-shrinking diamond pile. “Thirty seconds.”
“Until?” Egret tosses the remaining stack of sticker paper onto the floor.
The moment the last diamond disappears into the ether, the air grows thick and heavy, as if a storm cloud’s rolled into their ventilation system. On the desk behind Amitha, a forgotten cup of coffee begins to swirl counter-clockwise, fast enough the spoon begins to move with it. Every loose sheet of paper on the floor whirls around, compass-like, pointing straight away from where Egret’s standing.
“I’d be sorry for what’s going to happen if it wasn’t your fault,” Amitha says.
Egret opens her mouth to respond and finds a finger poking out between her lips instead. A second one follows shortly thereafter. Within seconds, her jaw finds itself forced open by a hand clawing itself out from somewhere in her trachaea. It’s slick with a mix of saliva and crude hydrocarbons, which sluice onto the floor in thick, tarry ribbons.
Amitha watches, impassive, as Egret bends double in an attempt to expedite this thing’s passage through her throat. All it seems to do instead is increase the flow of crude oil onto the floor. It certainly doesn’t seem to help her when an elbow finds itself stuck behind her teeth; she ends up having to heave her upper body back and forth before it eventually slips out, as if she’s trying to slingshot it out of her esophagus.
No such manoeuvring helps her when a flash of the body’s head peeks out of her mouth. Her jaw arm-wrestles physics for a few futile moments and loses. The sound of it wrenching loose reminds Amitha of fighting with her brother over the wishbone at Thanksgiving.
One of Egret’s canines pops onto the floor and bounces off the toe of Amitha’s boot.
The crowning ends up being the hardest part. Once the bridge of the nose is through, Egret’s skull is sufficiently mangled as to not impede further progress. In one final, full-body spasm, Egret pukes up head, shoulders, knees and toes, before her body gives out beneath her and she collapses.
What’s flopped out onto the floor has the rough shape of a human being, although it’s hard to tell underneath its thick coating of tar. More details resolve as it pulls itself upright with unsettling grace. Sheets of grease transmute themselves into the shimmering, sheer cashmere of an elaborate ballroom gown. Oil falls away from its fingers, the muck falling away to reveal impossibly-manicured nails and giant gemstones, inset in both finely-crafted rings and the flesh itself.
By the time the body’s fully standing, it’s got enough substance to stretch out and crack its joints with a self-satisfied hum. Were it not for the puddle of muck spreading across the floor, it would be impossible to imagine the woman standing in front of Amitha wasn’t abducted from a runway. Flawless, dark skin, tasteful glitter across her cheek and collarbones, a dress that would launch the careers of a thousand amateur designers. The only traces of oil left on her are her lipstick and eyes, both of which swirl with flecks of iridescent color.
“Darling,” the woman purrs.
“Mammon,” Amitha replies. “About our pre-nup.”