Nightmare Fuel / Pact

Warning, unmarked spoilers below.

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• Molly's death was fairly fucked up. Goblins with needles and corkscrews took her to pieces and it looked like animals had been at her.
  • In fact, goblins in general are pretty horrifying as a result of their penchant for casual cruelty, especially against the weak and downtrodden.
• The very thorough description of the pile of meat sculpted into the shape of a human left outside Maggie's school.
  It was an art piece. Grotesque, vile, violent. At first glance, she saw it was a fat man, adult and naked, leaning against the fence, ass on the ground, legs crossed. Torn to pieces, rigged up with chains, boards and nails, mouth yawning open as though his jaw were broken or something huge had been rammed through his mouth and throat to open it wide. He smelled like shit and blood that had been sitting in the sun for ten minutes at a minimum, maybe as much as an hour.

  At second glance, she could see it wasn’t really a man. Meat, bone and other bits had been fixed together in a crude semblance of a person. Nails, wire, and other boards held bits in places, and strips of meat had been wrapped to bind other strips in place. A haphazard grid of wires and woven strips of meat held the intestines in place, where they had been balled up and left at the midsection. Bits of the organs bulged through the gaps.

  At third glance, she saw the maggots that were already starting to fest on the thing. Whoever had worked on it had done so without the benefit of refrigeration.

  A medium sized dog, it had been stirred awake by the first physical contact. Bound in the middle of the meat thing, still alive, wire wound around its throat, propping it up to a standing position, the ends tying it to the fence. It still wore a collar, the tags jingling against the fence as it struggled. Blind, caked in filth, it fought against the man who was trying to free it.

• Pauz in general. He's a mote, an imp, the lowest-level of demon, and he's still freaking terrifying:
  • The suggestion of what would happen if Pauz managed to influence the Lord of Toronto. Given that it turns the entire area around it upside down and reverse the natural order, chaos would ensue.
  • Blake growing concerned over the absence of Rose in 4.6 only to learn that Pauz was involved and reversed their connection so Blake was killing her without realizing it.
  • Then what he said he would do to Laird in Void 7.1:
  “You won’t have a moment’s rest. You’ll slip, step too far. When you let me in, the first thing I’ll do is make you drink the contents of that chamberpot. I’ll bleed you and you’ll leak, pissing yourself in fear. I’ll watch you scramble to sop it up, to lap at it with your tongue and blot it with your rags, fighting to keep the circle from being compromised.”

  “Give me one hour inside that circle, and I can break you. I can make you wallow in your own piss and shit like a pig in mud, and you’ll be happy to do it, because it pleases me, and because it means I won’t make you feast on your own filth. Give me the chance, and I might go after your family, and I’ll do the same to them five times over.”

  “If you don’t give me the chance, I’ll make a sport of it, I’ll reduce you to the sort of animal that would go after them and do depraved things. I want to watch you come back to me like a dog to its master. But wait, you don't have a tail, do you? Shall I drag your intestines out through your arsehole so you have something to wag for me, Laird Behaim? That’s not permanent damage. It’s within the bounds of the written rules.”

• The forest Blake is driven by in Collateral 4.9 and investigates in Collateral 4.10, inhabited by ghosts in various states of mauling due to the Hyena Goblin that lives inside. This thing is a monster, not to mention the fact that it's damn near silent as it approaches, can round up the ghosts that are under its sway, and takes delight in slowly hunting down those who enters it's domain. A kid was its the last victim prior to Blake and it took the time to corner him over the course of days.
  • And then there's its appearance:
  Fur, matted and stained with mud and dark bodily fluids. (...) I saw its limbs. Scrawny fore and hind limbs, narrow enough for me to make out the bones and tendons. I could see gaps where the flesh sucked in around the ribcage, its dangling, twisted, knotted genitals, and the broken, splintered claws on each foot. For all that it was gaunt and broken, it was more scary, not less. Those claws wouldn’t cut me like a scalpel. They’d tear me like the uneven end of a broken bottle. (...) This thing was mangy, malnourished, and it was still strong enough to beat me in any contest of strength, no question.

  When it was visible again, I could see its muzzle pulled into a leer, revealing teeth that were every bit as broken and disgusting as the claws. (...) Everything fit together wrong. Proportions were off, if even, muscles overlapped in odd ways. This was not a creature crafted by years of evolution. It had been made wrong, more like a humanoid thing that had once walked on two legs and then been twisted and wrenched into a four-legged shape, everything torn apart and rearranged and regrown until it was this.

• The Abstract Demon. They call it that because they don't know what it is because it makes its victims RetGone to everyone else. Can you imagine not knowing what you've lost? Friends? Family? Comrades? In one case a member of the Knights of the Basement had so many of their connections, people they were close to, taken away that even though her boyfriend knows she exists they can't find or remember her accurately.
  Makes you wonder. Were we something different, before? Did we have more dreams? More aspirations? Did we lose important people that were supposed to prop us up, and settle into a different position when we tipped over, without them? (...) I look back at the places we were investigating, and they were big. A factory? An old farmstead? Far too big for our sad little group. Too big for a group twice our size. (...) It eats away at you. Wondering what we had, before it was taken away as thoroughly as something can be taken. We can’t do it again. Can’t go up against something big and lose.”
  • Hell, it's the one demon they had to outright flee from with a massive body that lurked in the darkness waiting for them to make a single mistake. Blake and Rose don't remember they brought help in the fight because the story is being told by Blake and the information was Ret-Gone to even the reader (at least until a Histories chapter revealed them to be the Goblins supporting the Hyena). The only reason they have some knowledge is because they came across the bloodstains and body parts.
  I think three of our allies just died.
  • In Void 7.11 it manages to ensnare Blake.
  • In Histories 7 it's revealed to have gotten powerful enough to create motes of its own.
  • It's eating at The Drains, which is between the cracks in the world and possibly reality itself. It takes a lesser god just to hold it off.
• Many of the demons of the Choir of Darkness have truly horrifying abilities. Examples include:
  • Caacrinolaas, whose venom eradicates you and forces you to do horrible things to those you care about if you don't want them stuck pining forever for you once you're gone.
  • Shabriri, who renders people deafblind and drives them mad from staring into the void.
• Practitioners themselves can be downright terrifying when you think about it. In Convictions 5.1 we see one who is a police officer and almost cordial as he explains he has systematically ruined Blake's life to get him out of the way and as a favor to the Duchamps. He has framed him for murder, written him off as schizophrenic, turned his friends against him, and if he tries anything he can shoot him dead and have the Duchamps manipulate connections to make him come out smelling like roses.
  • The scariest part is that he doesn't even have anything against Blake.
• Midge. She's an unstoppable juggernaut that tanked explosions and bullets brought about by a few generations of inbreeding and that led to her becoming something of an Other, without losing any of that native human cunning. She has a disdain for everything and was smart enough to exploit a Loophole Abuse in her summoning to turn against her summoner.

• Blake's Catapult Nightmare in Subordination 6.9. It shows just how much the last two weeks have taken their toll on him.
  My hands were paralyzed, one wrapped around the handle of the Hyena’s sword, spikes sticking through the flesh and out the back of hand, thumb and fingers, too painful for me to let go of it. The other hand was tangled by the locket and the cord that surrounded the imp’s book, fingers bent back out of position. When I moved, it had been a jerky, frustrated movement, the length of the sword, the pain, and the weight of the sword and book all frustrating my attempts to interact with the world.

  My arms were cracked open like a hard plastic doll, and all that was within were feathers of mixed, dull colors, sticking to one another. I couldn’t move fast enough to catch up to anyone. I was too tired, too gaunt, an old man in a young-looking body, and the objects bound to my hands were too awkward to allow me to open doors easily or even walk through a crowded area without banging them on something.

  I couldn’t close my eyes, because something black and monstrous slithered beneath the surface every time I did. When I breathed, it was like I was having the heart attack again. The air I spent was air that I couldn’t replenish by any means. I was deflating, losing substance.

  There was nothing to do but stand there, too tired to move, arms spread like I was crucified, or a bird in mid-flight, staring at Rose and her gathered summonings, with Pauz perched on her shoulder. I somehow knew that words would cost me more of that vital substance than I could afford to spare. I knew, too, that nobody would listen.

  I stared until my eyes watered, because the idea of blinking was too terrifying…The water in my eyes became welling moisture, and the resulting tear that fell from my right eye was black and heavy. I could feel the tendrils and tiny clawed feet reaching out from the tear, rasping against my cheekbone.

• Signature 8.6 gives a view into Johannes' demesne, inhabited by Others who prey upon the vestiges he's created from the civilians within, who are terrified, confused, and think that they're the real inhabitants of Jacob's Bell. Maggie encounters a group of children who have been changed by various Others, and sees that they're falling apart and shored up by animal spirits that Johannes controls, which are eating them alive.
• In Signature 8.7 Johannes notes that the pipes that became his implement were originally capable of beguiling children and were used by people who were most likely pedophiles, which is a really creepy concept.
• The Drains is a really creepy place to end up in. The realm itself tries to break you down, forcing you to become more and more monstrous if you want to survive. It takes in anything from Others, people, things, and even gods. Think about that for a second.
  • The second trip through the Abyss, which this time takes them to the Tentements. Imagine being sandwiched between two parallel cliffs composed of random bits of buildings. You have to climb up to escape, but not all the handholds are safe...and that's not even getting into the swarms of biting insects that bury under your skin to eat you alive, as Roxanne learned, nor the Others living inside the buildings who try to drag you inside and do horrible things to you.
    • And if that wasn't bad enough, there's something else out there in the darkness beyond the buildings, something so huge and vast that it shakes the buildings whenever it passes....which takes a full five minutes. Some people theorize that it's Ornias.
  • The third trip, following the Rule of Three is the worst. The Library actively attacks you and cuts off your escapes, and then that's with Barbatorem chasing after them. It even got Kathryn, turning her into a Bogeyman by showing her exactly how horrible a person she was and in self-delusion, to the point she was becoming a drawing in a children's book.
• Urr is an omnicidal, eldritch, Living Shadow that is eating its way from this reality into another. It's also a low to middle tier demon at most. What the hell is a top tier like?
  • Hell, an Angel himself admitted that in a one-on-one scenario the Demons would beat same-tier Angels every time and the best they can do is hold off entropy.
  • It's briefly hinted at just what kinds of beings top tier demons are like. Rosalyn theorizes that the entire universe is simply a remnant of something far larger. The reason that something doesn't exist anymore is because the First Choir demons ate it.
• Malfeasance 11.6. Not any one particular moment, but the thought that a person's entire family can be so greedy, so morally destitute that they are willing to falsely declare one of their relatives insane in order to pillage everything they own. The Thorburns have always been described as a nasty bunch, but the fact that every single one of them - including Rose's own parents! - were in on it elevates them to a new level of vileness.
  • Now imagine how much worse they'd be if they were all awakened as practitioners. Or worse, Diabolists?
• Eva and Andy's raid on the Hillglades House, as one commenter put it, is like a Slasher Film. Without warning they come in and attack you and put you down, and Eva (who is noted to be somewhat crazed from He Who Fights Monsters) is absolutely brutal to the youngest in the group for attacking back. Even before then she beat Kathryn and Callan until they were unconscious.
  • The Bogeyman that gets bounced back and attacks Blake's friends is pretty horrifying - a young woman made entirely out of paper holding a book bound with human hide. She attacks by dissolving into hundreds of sheets of paper and then papercutting her victims to death.
  She smiled, the paper of her face reshuffling, her expression changing in the wake of the rearrangement. “Paper and wood. Affinity. A-F-F-I-N-I-T-Y. I’ll let you free when I’m done. If they bring you up and out and you manage to kill them, you’re free.”

  “I don’t want you to kill them,” I said.

  “E-X-S-A-N-G-U-I-N-A-T-E,” she spelled out the word. “The blood loss will kill them, not me. Then I’ll have their skin, and I’ll make a new book with a new cover and fill it with new words.”

  “Leave them alive,” I said.

  “Ohh,” she said, her voice almost sing-song, amid the whispers. “We can sup on the fear. Cut them in the sensitive parts of the flesh. In the meat between each tooth, the corners of the mouth, the eyelids and the eyes themselves. The webbing of the fingers and toes. The achilles tendon. Then, when we have them just how we want them, the soft flesh of the stomach... The armpit... the thigh.”
• Blake post-transformation can be pretty terrifying considering he appears less and less human. He can track you by fear and grow stronger from it, appearing in any reflection almost instantly and then reaching out of it to grab you. Water, mirror, blood, anything that has a reflection. And then he can use magic to make objects in the real world move to attack even if you get out of his reach, and attacking him does nothing since he heal almost instantly. You could break him to pieces and he'd come back as long as the spirits are willing to stay with him in order to become something greater.
  • And that's not getting into how he literally tears himself apart and shoves bits of himself into an effigy, last of all being his own heart so he gains a body in the real world.
• Crone Mara:
  • How does she maintain her youth? She cripples herself before stealing her children's bodies and then sealing them in dolls afterwards.
  • Sine Die 14.7 reveals that she can kill with a single word.
• The twins during the siege. They move like one entity, but if they don't have the same injuries it breaks the link, so if one of them gets injured the other will hurt themselves to synch back up. Even if it means killing themselves.
• The Bane, a thrice-tortured-to-death-by-disease creation of necromancy that resists magic, has necrotic blades, and can turn anything it kills into itself.
  • Callan's death during the same siege. The Bane slashes his throat with its necrotic blades and the homunculi eat him alive when he collapses.
• Green Eyes "Degloves" a woman's entire midsection with her barbed scales. It's about as gruesome as you could guess.
  • And then she nearly bites off Jeremy's groin.
  Green Eyes emerged from the snow in front of him. Her jaws were open wider than a human could pull off, teeth open, a bear trap, waiting to be sprung. A half-foot from Jeremy’s groin.
• The kinds of men that the Duchamps marry their daughters too, such as the necromancer whose Bane killed Callan, the Drug Dealer who ruined his wife with the addiction, the Valkalla who uses his newborn sister's souls as fuel, and the man who practically lives in the Abyss and takes it home with him. Honestly, Sandra lucked out.
• As if everything Padriac had done to Maggie weren't enough, he kidnapped the actual Joanna when she was getting ready to turn ten years old and kept her in a fairy house where she would be stuck inside a Lotus-Eater Machine for the rest of her life. He and his friends have been taking on her role for ages without anyone the wiser.
• Jacob's Bell is so messed up a place that the only thing keeping it from falling into the Abyss is the innocents who still live there.
• Johannes has numerous powerful Others under his control, and is probably the single most powerful practitioner in Jacob's Bell. He's even got a dragon and a giant under his control, and there's no telling what else lurks in his demesne.
• Dragon's fire is so potent it can possibly burn to the spirit. And to kill a fire dragon you need to hit it with even more potent fire or face it in combat and win.
• Arthild not only turns into a giant rat, but she gives birth with fluids and all by slamming her engorged stomach into a wall to make a Swarm of Rats.
• Barbatorem earned his title of The Dreaded in Possession 15.1, Run or Die is in full effect.
• Possession 15.4 and 15.5 reveal that Conquest has been slowly taking over Rose more and more as she draws upon his power in order to gain more agency.
• When one diabolist over reaches and summons a Demon Noble, Mahoun, in short order it has him covered in cuts that won't heal, missing his legs, and then it went after his family, made them wrong by letting them find his books and let other demons possess them. He's flatout told that the Firm is his only way out, otherwise the demon would keep him around and suffering for a very long time. And joining the firm offers no relief because he's going to run into other demons like it, for the next five-hundred and seventy-six years.
  • It's even pointed out he could have paid that sort of debt off working a single lifetime, now consider how long the Thorburn family has at seven lifetimes worth?
• Johannes comes back in Judgement 16.1, this time being possessed by the Barber, and ends up enslaving Faysal.
  • And then there's what happened to his demesne with the demon in charge. If that place was a nightmare for vestiges before, it was a hellhole for everything now.
  • Worse, Faysal is being forced to open portals to wherever demons come from with the implication that they plan to flood the world with demons.
  • Judgement 16.10 reveals that the Barber can talk while possessing people, and it uses that ability to do a Hannibal Lecture on Blake and company, noting that all their efforts will only strengthen the hold of demons on the world. Also, there's a really creepy line it tells Blake:
  "Underestimating you? I made you,"