Her agony-- and the hatred-- are like gasoline on the fire that is Etrigan's power. The visions come harder, faster; Jason sucks in a harshly hissed breath as the demon throws horror after horror at him.
He is no stranger to gore and misery-- he's perpetrated more than his share of it-- but what shreds of conscience remain to him object to telling the child the things he sees. Old beyond her years she may be, heart hardened by slaughters witnessed, but she's a damned girl.
His oldest daughter had been nearly her age.
Etrigan brooks no qualms, no second thoughts, no pity.
You swore you would read for her, fool! Keep your part of our bargain: be cruel.
"Your brother was shot with arrows," he says, his voice losing some of its impersonal distance, more ragged. "Many of them. A man-- pale-- a walking leech-- stabbed him through the heart. I don't find a name."
More images. A wolf, slaughtered. The head severed, swapped for the man's in a grotesque mockery and sacrilege. It's bad enough but what follows on its heels is worse.
The dead woman on her feet, one hand clutching at her throat, all sanity gone from her pallid gaze.
No! Damn you, Etrigan, no!
He's shoved his chair back from the table barely aware he's done so, gripping the edge in a silent struggle with the devil's will, his eyes fixed on things invisible to Arya Stark.
[Location: Cafe in Speares]
He is no stranger to gore and misery-- he's perpetrated more than his share of it-- but what shreds of conscience remain to him object to telling the child the things he sees. Old beyond her years she may be, heart hardened by slaughters witnessed, but she's a damned girl.
His oldest daughter had been nearly her age.
Etrigan brooks no qualms, no second thoughts, no pity.
You swore you would read for her, fool!
Keep your part of our bargain: be cruel.
"Your brother was shot with arrows," he says, his voice losing some of its impersonal distance, more ragged. "Many of them. A man-- pale-- a walking leech-- stabbed him through the heart. I don't find a name."
More images. A wolf, slaughtered. The head severed, swapped for the man's in a grotesque mockery and sacrilege. It's bad enough but what follows on its heels is worse.
The dead woman on her feet, one hand clutching at her throat, all sanity gone from her pallid gaze.
No! Damn you, Etrigan, no!
He's shoved his chair back from the table barely aware he's done so, gripping the edge in a silent struggle with the devil's will, his eyes fixed on things invisible to Arya Stark.