Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd. does not require employees to loan their souls to the company during the period of their employment, nor during their initiation rites.
This work contains CWs for: mentions of cannibalism.
This tale is also a soft sequel to A Wolf At The Door, but it is not necessary to read that to enjoy this. It will simply add context.
A Completely Normal Employee Initiation That Definitely Doesn’t Hurt by xexnoncores
Silver-tongued lamb
At the slaughter
You have wandered into the wolves’ den
The viper’s altar
Beg for this life you wish to call home
And don’t you dare
Falter
February 7th, 2020
“Um—Where are you taking me?”
“Patience is a virtue, Dorian.”
“Y-Yes Madam Iris, I understand—but the blindfold—when can I take this off?”
“Stop squirming so much. I don’t want the leeches to eat your feet.”
Dorian bites his lip as as his new boss Iris pushes him forward and he feels writhing from beneath the floor. He isn’t sure if it’s metal or stone protecting him, but fuck, he doesn’t really feel like he’s allowed to ask that right now. Nothing in the past seventy-two hours has felt like something he was allowed to ask about, and that was a lot coming from people who had once been so forthcoming about his job details that they would have shown him a dead body if they needed to.
Three days was a long time to be blindfolded. After his first auction was complete and he received his commission, he was flown out to London and thrust into a room with nothing but that silk over his eyes and the clothes on his back. Something happened in between those moments but he couldn’t recall. His sense of time was warped like he’d been knocked out cold.
He wasn’t sure if he should be lucky that water was included, but he supposed his employers needed to preserve the supernaturally charming voice they hired him for.
“Don’t you think we ought to modernize this process, Iris? I mean, why not just sit them in a totally dark room?”
“Because that’s not how the spell works, Chrysophilius. It asks for the windows to the soul to be covered, not for the world to be smothered in all its beauty.”
What a lovely conversation to hear over an intercom.
Goddamnit—! he thinks, the world spinning where he couldn’t see. All of this wasn’t even mentioning that he hadn’t had food all this time either. First he’s eating caviar with gold-leaf on top, and now it’s just dust for…dinner? Lunch? Breakfast?
What time is it even?
He bites his lip as his feet continue to hit the ground in a heavy-panted clip, his arms held firmly by his side where Iris is practically strangling his shoulders.
“Faster, Mr. Sloan,” she says, reorienting her hands. They feel like vice-grips. “We must do this before the moon sets.”
“Do what?!” He sucks in a sharp inhale at his raised voice. Though Iris makes no noise of disapproval, Dorian can’t help but imagine her narrowing eyes now bleeding him from his back.
He is pushed forward face-first into a wall. It’s cold, and feels like plastically lacquered wood.
The squirming stops, and he’s whirled around.
His stomach growls with ferried teeth, angry at him for abandoning it during this long-awaited time of plenty. A six million net worth increase and this is what he was putting up with?
But he’s not alone. He’s not alone in his stewing, and he only realizes that once he hears a metal door close and the thick wool of two other suits pushing up against his sides.
“Dorian! The man of the hour!”
Chrysophilius Marshall. His other new boss. He can taste the twisted vanilla tone of his chiming voice, eager and knavish.
“Oh, is this Mr. Sloan?” a softer, unfamiliar voice rings out. It’s just as British as Dorian expected, but it flows like rose water compared to everyone else he’s heard so far. “You told me he was of Irish descent, but he doesn’t really look all that out of place from the Mediterranean.”
Chrysophilius laughs. “Some people can get a great tan with no effort!”
“Indeed.”
“Oh, Iris—” Chrysophilius’s voice is grating like a knife against styrofoam. “Can he take the blindfold off now? He’s gotta see Robert!”
“Robert?”
Ugh, that came out from him like a starving mouse. Get yourself together Dorian.
“Oh, pardon my manners—” A thin fabric glove brushes up against Dorian’s hand, but only for a second. Robert must have pulled away. “Ah, best to wait until the proper moment. But yes, I am a junior partner as well—Robert Shahid Carter. Pleasure to meet you.”
“You don’t need to introduce yourself with your full name,” Chrysophilius blurts. Dorian could hear him playfully rolling his eyes with a snicker.
“It is not my problem that your parents followed up such a fancy Greek name with ‘Scooter’, Skitter.” Robert says this as if he’s done it before, but whether he was being sarcastic or playful wasn’t clear to Dorian.
Chrysophilius’s reaction does not clarify this at all. “Hey!”
Dorian exhales as quietly as his mood and fraying sense of restraint allows. Not because he’s miffed, but because he’s trying not to laugh, despite his sanded bemusement. Robert is right—that middle name really does not fit the glossy image that Chrysophilius wanted to embody. It’s almost childish in a way Dorian found unfortunately, misfortunately appropriate.
It’s only as their silence trails and fills their heads with anticipation of each other that they notice Iris hasn’t spoken since the elevator began moving.
“…Iris?” Dorian asks as he swallows dry spit.
She begins her words with an iron fist. “Two ninety-seven, two ninety-eight, two ninety-nine…”
As soon she’s to come upon three hundred, pale light floods amber eyes. Dorian recoils as his senses screech, the relatively meager gray of the surrounding walls coiling like they were to fall over on him. His nose wrinkles and his ears pop unceremoniously, just to finish off this off-tune balancing ballad even more.
“Should be cordoned off from the rest of the world enough now,” Iris says plainly. She snaps her fingers extremely authoritatively, the gesture breaking into Dorian’s head like a gunshot. “Focus on me now, Dorian, focus.”
Iris claps her hands as she towers over him with the same height she always has, her black suit now a monotone comfort from the dizziness of wobbling hues. Dorian forces himself to focus on her black, greased hair as the rest of the colors in his vision slide properly back into focus, arriving just in time as Robert pops into his field of view.
“Interesting eyes. They look like carnelian,” he comments. Dorian can’t help but swing his gaze over to those bulbous glass circles where his eyes should be, though he does note the black plastic surrounding it matches Robert’s tawny skin tone. He didn’t expect him to be wearing a red suit as well, much less with hair to match.
“…Is that a gas mask?” is all he can choke out. He didn’t notice until now Robert’s cadence had a slight muffle to it.
“Indeed,” Robert replies with a nod, and before Dorian can get another word in, something sharp pokes his ankle, with a smooth cold following up soon after.
“Wah—!”
“Ugh, Robert, can’t you ever introduce that thing normally?”
“Chrysophilius, let me have my fun. He’s got to get used to it one way or another.”
Get used to what—?! is all Dorian can think until he stumbles just a bit and finds a hard coil around his ankle. Finally looking down, his breath catches in his throat as a long, slick cord of metal pulls him backward.
At its end is a ruby cut like a pyramid, shining with the color of blood.
“…A tail.”
“Correct,” Robert replies. “Helps me with my daily routine.”
“That must have been quite the nuisance to tailor around,” Dorian mutters with a fakely cracked smile.
Robert lightly chuckles. “Indeed it was. But that’s what we pay them for.”
“Are we almost to the basement?” Chrysophilius blurts. His impatience is rusting the dry air. “Our dads and Madam Percival shouldn’t be kept waiting.”
“This ritual relies on punctuality,” Iris snips back at him. “We will arrive precisely fifteen minutes from our departure, upon which we will then expend precisely three quarters of an hour before he’s ready to be sent off.”
“Sent off?” That sounds like an unusual turn-of-phrase to refer to putting an auctioneer to work. “Didn’t I already sign all the necessary paperwork for this position…?”
“You did, but you are not yet fully integrated into the company system.” Iris exhales deeply. “There are matters which concern your safety and our interests which need to be steeped, simmered, and settled properly. Do you know how to cast a spell, Dorian?”
He shakes his head.
“Precisely. In a world ruled by magic and miracles, did you really think we’d ferry you off by your lonesome defenseless? We’ve got one more step before you can begin your work properly.”
I already feel like I’m bargaining with the Devil, Dorian thinks, staring deeply into Iris’s eyes. Her pupils are knifed, thin as a razor’s edge, and they are hungry with the same kind of bottomless greed he remembers being taught about in Mass at a young age.
Avarice plunges a man deep into the mire of this world, so that he makes it to be his god.
From Henry Edward Manning, someone that for some reason, Dorian remembers. His local bishop adored the man, and often talked about his role models with his mother back when she still took Dorian and his sister every week. (Their schedules were all far too busy for that now).
Fat lot of good a lack of greed did him and his family’s souls though—if God wanted to be more desirable, he shouldn’t have made the devil of such great means.
I’m definitely going to hell for that thought. The thought creeps down his spine in a polar, crystallized guilt until he throws a blanket over that train at hearing Robert’s voice again.
“You’re going to need all of that—” he begins, “it’ll be a way to escape if one of our enemies wants to shiv you for seducing them into saying yes over something they said no to initially.”
Dorian freezes. Everyone in the elevator freezes, actually, except for Robert. His masked face betrays little of how much he understands the rising tension in the air, until the silence becomes too much for him to bear.
“…What? What are you two looking at me like that for?”
Iris’s eyes go wide but her gaze narrows to a pinpoint at him. Chrysophilius bites his lip, flattening his expression out into an even, nervous smile that he has to quickly hide in his hand as both Dorian and Robert lean forward with great confusion.
“…E-Enemies?”
Dorian knows he shouldn’t stutter so much, but he can’t help it. His muscles are shaking from the lack of food, his head buzzing with a sticky static that won’t go away even in the fear and anticipation crawling down his skin right now.
As he ruminates, his mind conjures up red-cut carpets, filled to the brim with silk-covered tables housing the kind of people who would have murdered their children for a better position within their department, staring him down with the intent to kill.
Robert’s tail quickly stiffens.
“…Don’t tell me you two didn’t properly inform him of what we wanted to have him doing.”
Chrysophilius butts in first. “We did, thank you very much. Having him work the auctions is what we agreed he would be doing most of the time.”
“Yes, clearing out inventory makes him useful enough,” Iris responds with a grit of her teeth. Her fangs grind each other each with an annoyance Dorian can tell is pointed inward.
Robert swings around as soon as they finish to stare Dorian point-blank in the face. His lack of eyes unnerves all the more now. How did he get away with wearing that thing on a daily basis?
“Mr. Sloan,” he starts stoically, “our auction business is indeed something we’re proud of—however it’s an antiquated arm of the company inherited from times when communication was less instant than it was now.”
Dorian balks, cocking his head slightly. “W-What—?”
This is what he signed up for. This is what he was handpicked for. Right? Right? These guys wanted to make money, and all that revenue from his previous work he did wasn’t enough for them…?
“That doesn’t mean we don’t prize it—” Robert continues. “Rather, it plays a much different role most of the time than it did back then. Many of the ones we hold attached to our names now are more akin to private parties than breadwinning moneymakers. What’s there is often for a select group of someones, usually those capable of changing the way the politics spin, because the hardest part of asking for something is the very first ‘yes’ it takes to get your foot in the door.”
He’s talking fast for someone so shelled just a minute ago. Dorian can’t help but wonder if Robert was drilling him like a sergeant or if he was genuinely this passionate about political incentivicism.
But he has a point. The exchange of power, and what it could do, often hinged entirely upon a single line of consent, a single commitment which, even if taken back later, might be enough to get you where you needed to be anyway. And that wasn’t even mentioning how the dominoes could fall once the mechanisms began turning—soon it might be too late to say no, and that would be of no fault to anyone except the buyer.
It wasn’t exactly good morals to take someone’s ‘yes’ and run with it—but it was good business, and it was a good way to make a living, provided you could pave over the cracks once the smoke settled—and that was something Dorian figures the British of all people were particularly good at given their former empire.
The men his sisters worked with were certainly good at that. (He wants to get them out of that).
Dorian relaxes as his thoughts work themselves, noticing Robert’s tail stretching in tandem as stiff shoulders fall. He’s just an inch shorter than him, and nearly just as skinny save for his slightly broader shoulders.
“…So you just want me to talk a bunch of city councilmen into letting you bypass zoning laws?” he blurts smoothly, smiling with a coy display of teeth. “Is that it?”
What a choke, Dorian. His back presses up smoothly against the elevator wall like a spatula against a grill, the eyes of all three titans now on him.
“…Iris, what have you been told about employee informance?”
“Uh, Robert—” Chrysophilius replies. “Informance means a play— Did you mean, like education or something?”
He shakes his head, inhaling sharp. “I hate this— Whatever means that Iris needed to have told Dorian ahead of time the kinds of people he’ll be dealing with—”
“What?!” Now she’s alive, and her eyes are burning with blue fire. “Did you want me to frontload him so horrendously that he’d run off to tip the enemy?”
Robert’s voice rises, but only halfway with volume. The other half feels like he’s straining himself to speak above a loud whisper. “You cannot use sales tactics to recruit employees—informed consent is a must! You’ve been told this—one yes isn’t enough! We have to keep them around and sane!”
Iris leans over him with her chest out and her feet digging into the floor. “They only need to know as much is required at the signing moment!” she barks, her face turning a slight red. Dorian’s stomach growls at the most inopportune time and she shakes her head to hiss at…something.
Robert continues as if she’s not the one so obviously in charge. “And what if he gets second thoughts when we ask him to make someone strip down for a dragon to roast them?”
What the fuck—
“Or when we need a bunch of college students to throw themselves at a demons’ pit?”
Oh my god, oh my god, they’re—
“What if some of our friends just really want to see their enemies walk into a woodchipper? You know how popular snuff is these days.”
“He’ll deal with it!” Iris squeals. She almost yells, actually, but it doesn’t quite come out right. As soon as she’s done, her face flushes with the most uneven shade Dorian’s seen on skin yet, and she crosses her arms in an almost straitjacket-like lock. The entire time, she’s snarling like a hunting dog.
“…He will deal with it, or it’s his head.”
“Yeah, and that’ll be ninety-seven million dollars down the drain in finder’s fees.” Robert quips. “He isn’t likely to make that money back soon enough.”
Woah, they spent that much on me? Dorian thinks.
“Woah, Robert—” Chrysophilius had been watching the entire scene with a shit-eating grin up until now. “Hey, let’s not be so hasty—”
“I’m not,” he replies coolly. “Just saying I put cash in the pot too. Because of this missed step, we don’t even know if he’s capable of—”
“Capable of what?”
Everyone stops. Iris with bare tears in her eyes, Robert with his emotionless visage, Chrysophilius with his blanking gaze.
The elevator seems to stop with them too, even though it’s still moving.
Dorian didn’t know she was capable of this. The stolid ambience she gave off was breaking down now, like a lamb bleeding all over the cutting board. Looking at her, against his good judgement, he’s reminded of his sisters, of when they faced the uncertainty of the world and then cracked from it in their own ways.
Nobody likes pain. Nobody likes the pain of being wrong, no matter how spoiled or pedantic the reason for that pain really was.
“…Ahem,” he begins, clearing his throat against the growling of his stomach again. “…I appreciate the concern, Mr. Carter, but in case you didn’t notice, I am not particularly in the position to reject anything.”
He wonders how much they know about his background. About where he grew up, how he grew up. Watching a mother work herself to death to pay rent, an older sister scramble to pay for the food everyone else needed, and often it wasn’t enough.
Dorian didn’t get a proper childhood because he was too busy testing how far his supernatural voice could get him without sacrificing his morals.
Iris wipes her eyes with her cuffs and stands up straight again, taking a deep breath in an unsteady manner as she does. Chrysophilius leans against the wall while Robert’s tail curls in on itself, flicking here and there.
“…I took this job for a better chance at life—” Dorian begins, “…and I am not unfamiliar to the idea it may involve…”
He winces when he remembers the woodchipper comment. Surely that was just a jest…but if it’s not…
“…Unsavory methods. Upward mobility is the American Dream, isn’t it?”
He smiles at that like he’s been given some present nobody else has. Iris opens her mouth to respond, but as soon as she does, the elevator brakes. Everyone braces themselves as the door crashes open to pure darkness, a booming voice filling the space before any of them can register to think.
“Indeed it is, boy.”
That’s not coming from anywhere near any of them. It sounds like an older woman.
“And what bravado you possess in the face of uncertainty—it’s about time we procured someone with some real American spirit around here.”
Dorian blinks, blankly, as the other three dust themselves off and stand to attention. Iris in particular looks up towards the ceiling and out towards the void, as if she recognizes with surveyed intent who and where that voice was coming from.
“Time to meet the big kahuna,” Chrysophilius says with a more solemn look than Dorian knew him capable of.
“A trial by fire—” Robert continues.
“Of ice is more appropriate,” Iris corrects him. “You know her disdain for burning people alive.”
“It’s quite a waste of good meat, isn’t it?”
Dorian shudders. He pretends he doesn’t hear that. He pretends this is all normal. He pretends to himself it’s just a regular interview as he steps out of the elevator and into the unknown that quickly gives way to a pair of piercing eyes in the dark.
A pair of eyes as blue as the color could ever hope to be. More vicious than the one who called herself the junior Darke.
“Well, well, well, well, well—” Percival says, a cascade of white lights beginning to click on behind her. They illuminate vast bookshelves as deep as fat corpses and as long as the greatest of leviathans.
“What a pleasure it is to finally meet you in the flesh, Mr. Sloan.” Her voice sounds similar to that of a viper. Deep, but clear as a bell, with hints of soprano tones on the stressed vowels. “I’m pleased to see you made it not only in one piece, but that my daughter’s anticipation for your silver-tongued abilities was not unfounded.”
Every word she speaks drills shivers down Dorian’s spine. It feels like he’s being iced with every passing second, gazed upon like he was livestock ready for the butcher’s knife.
When the room finally glows, this fear gives birth to its own tail, and swallows. The first thing he sees is her—Percival, in her black attire, coiffed collar and large jacket slung over her back like a panther’s hide. Her skin is deathly pale, with hair as obsidian as the night, and she’s donned so much silk and platinum that Dorian feels almost compelled to get on his knees and bow. She’d probably like that, actually—in fact, she has a massive portrait of herself in the style of Henry VIII right behind her head, complete with her cleaving visage and an outstretched hand cradling a massive globe.
It stares down right into his soul. Into every part of himself he considered worthwhile for others to bear witness to.
Was she going to own all of that by the time he walked out of here?
“Mr. Sloan, this is my mother, Percival Darke,” Iris says coolly, awash in confidence now from the aureole of gravity Percival is putting out. What a change from her earlier demeanor. “She is the sitting CEO of Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd.”
“…Thank you for having me here, madam,” is all that can come out of his throat in reply. He hopes he’s remembering the title she was referred to by earlier correctly.
“The honor is all mine—”
Before she can finish, the lights darken, and two spotlights flash. A red and a gold flame flicker on above two doors, standing tall above everyone’s heads.
A booming voice comes out first.
“Percival~!” It sounds much jollier and fuller than anyone Dorian’s met so far. “Introducing yourself to the employees without involving us again?”
Soon a second comes out to follow, this time solemn like a drum.
“Indeed, Ruprecht has a point—these icebreakers are supposed to be triadic, no?”
The lights flickers on again, this time with stairs having appeared in helixes spiraled down behind Percival’s desk. Dorian watches with bated breath as a fat man in a red suit descends with his skinnier colleague in tandem, wearing what he could only describe as tweed with artistic gold accents.
“Amos, Ruprecht, Dorian Sloan. Dorian, to you they are the senior Marshall, and the senior Carter. They are a part of the heritage of this company, the eternal bloodlines fated to aid in its proliferation.”
“Ah,” he says, speaking like he has to put up airs now, “so everyone’s related here?”
He says it partially as a joke, which makes Ruprecht smile wide, but he’s unable to get anything off Amos other than a furrowed frown. However, it doesn’t feel too off the mark—the resemblances between Percival and Iris are obvious. And with Chrysophilius and Robert, they weren’t far behind—the former had Amos's dark eyes and blonde locks, while the latter possessed the same shade of ruddy hair as Ruprecht, along with his rectangular palms.
“Yes, by the thickest of blood,” Ruprecht replies. “Though Robert is actually my nephew, not my biological son.”
Dorian takes a deep inhale. “Should that matter to me? You both look enough alike.”
Ruprecht chuckles, merrily shrugging his shoulders with his cane in hand. “I tell everyone all the time! Hard to believe they don’t see it, no?”
I wonder why, Dorian thinks, noting that Ruprecht’s skin tone was the kind which probably burned in the sun in contrast to his nephew’s. Robert did look a lot like his uncle despite that, though, Dorian wasn’t lying there.
“He’s my little sister’s child,” Ruprecht continues, beaming about as wide as a father could. “She married some billionaire’s son from Pakistan—unfortunately they died in a car accident, so it was on me to take care of him when the dust settled.”
Dorian doesn’t say anything, but he’s getting the impression Ruprecht was leaving something out there. Though he knows that his idea of British people comes from stereotypes filtered through Hollywood and TV, he can’t help but feel like it’s accurate to say that Ruprecht should probably have had his own family at some point. English royal inbreeding was a joke Dorian heard in high-school, after all, because of how important blood was to them.
What happened to his wife and kid?
He looks over to Robert, noticeably a distance away from Ruprecht. Though Chrysophilius is the same, he doesn’t seem nearly as…unsure of his father as Robert is—and Dorian doesn’t know how he can tell that from his complete lack of facial expressions.
Move on, Dorian, he tells himself. Some things aren’t your business.
Percival shoots a look in his direction as if to follow in Ruprecht’s steps. He probably was the one she wanted to go first—it was Marshall, Carter, and Dark, not Carter, Marshall, and Dark.
“Amos?”
“…I’m sure my son Chrysophilius has talked your ear off about himself already,” he begins, “so I’ll spare repeating him. We’re the left hand of the company, the pearls along the necks of the Darkes, the gold frame around the canvas of their machinations.”
“Which would make us, the Carters, the paint—” Ruprecht follows up. “We do a lot of the dirtier work around here, though Amos is no stranger to mulling over spreadsheets, haha!”
That seems to get something out of Amos, who smiles for a brief at Ruprecht second before looking back to Dorian.
“All business is dirty in some way,” he laments, “but yes, I do prefer to keep my hands cleaner than you may expect.”
“All of us keep our hands cleaner than you may expect,” Percival fills in. She smiles widely, white fangs glistening in the light against midnight lipstick. “Though we hold the reins of change, it is those like you who carry out our letter and will. I promise we will treat you exceptionally while you are employed here, even if we will ask a lot of your capabilities.”
She stands to attention, Ruprecht and Amos quickly falling to her side. Dorian has little time to react to the scene or what’s been said before he feels two pairs of hands on his shoulders forcing him to his knees.
Robert and Chrysophilius stare at him with anticipation as Iris completes the trifecta between them. As soon as the two triangles complete themselves, both Marshalls and Carters pull out a bottle of wine. Glittering white and a slicing red.
“And that, Mr. Sloan—is why we have summoned you the way we did today.”
Iris nods along to Percival’s words, as if she can feel the chill winding down Dorian’s spine. “It is time for you to bequeath your flesh and blood unto the body of Marshall, Carter, and Dark.”
Ruprecht follows up merrily. “To join our ranks in more than just ink and money…”
Amos does not fall behind. “To see to it that our sovereignty does not fail to aid you.”
Chrysophilius beams, like a kid at a birthday party. “You’ll have nothing to worry about ever again.”
Robert finally says something, his voice unusually clear now. “Money can soothe a lot of wounds.”
Before he knows it, all six of them are surrounding him. Percival and Iris at the north and south zeniths, with the Marshalls and Carters across from each other.
They’re all so tall. Being on the ground probably isn’t helping, but…
“Now—”
He swallows dry spit. He can tell Percival’s smile is wicked, that her eagerness is as sprawling as hungry thorns.
Her fangs are so, so sharp.
“Your voice has given you a gift. And from now until the end of your natural, most fullest lifespan—it shall produce fruit of which we will tend to, of which we will guide and prune, along the most auric of trellises and the most bountiful of fields.”
Amos takes a deep breath, popping the cork of his fizzing bottle. “You will be instructed to act upon our judgement, and you will perform accordingly.”
Ruprecht follows suit quickly. “And we will not tolerate any room for error on your part, nor questioning of our intentions.”
The juniors all chime in their threesome, like a choir of angels. “Do you understand this as we’ve laid it out for you?”
The sound of Chrysophilius and Robert’s bottle popping is so loud in Dorian’s ears that he can barely feel the blood rushing like rapids around his body. Like foaming, crashing water, eager but choking on its own form, on its own vomit, on what he is afraid will be dislodged that will see to his demise in front of what he is now sure are masters, just as much as they are monsters. (Probably).
With a single word, he is going to give his life away. With a single word, he is going to sign away his autonomy, his dignity, all in exchange for freedom. For the glittering freedom that money offers, will offer him.
That is why he does not respond with a single word.
“…Am I signing my soul away here?”
He doesn’t realize how much he’s broken the air of mystique until the silence raises twelve collective fists to choke him.
Percival smiles slyly at his question.
“No, I am not asking that of you. You never know when you will need that as a bargaining chip.”
Iris cuts in rather quickly. “This is simply to imbibe you with the forces that animate our company.”
“A bit of my power,” Percival replies, and for some reason, Dorian shivers at the fact she does not call it magic. That would be the name should it be any other grown rose—but here, under the Darkes, that sacred arrangement of letters—it is simply power.
“To protect you. We can’t have you being killed, or captured, no, no, no—this will give you the ability to tap into the arcane flowing through this company’s foundation like you do breathing.”
“…A type of fail-safe,” he says, as if he thinks his voice can reach anywhere where it would not falter and be looked down at.
Percival nods. “Precisely. The most basic talent you’ll gain is the ability to recall your person back to our main offices instantaneously. Everything else you’ll find yourself capable of will be explained in the handbook given to you at this initiation’s end.”
“Provided he’s not proper plastered by the end of the party upstairs.”
Everyone looks at Chrysophilius. He slinks back a bit from such narrowed, stone visages cutting into him, albeit Dorian couldn’t have been happier he spoke up.
“Party?”
His stomach growls. He clutches it and puts his hand over his mouth.
“I’m so sorry—”
All Percival does is shrug. But eventually, as everyone takes their bottles and raises it above their heads, thin necks tilted upwards like cherubic fountain spouts, she smiles.
She smiles so deeply as she gets on her knees and puts her hands on his shoulders.
Up close, everything about her screams omnipotence. Her makeup is perfect, her skin is wretchedly pale, pumping with veins as royally blue as they came. It is impossible not to smell perfume made with ingredients from every corner of the globe, most of them likely hidden from human eyes.
Her eagerness makes him want to fall.
“All the better reason for us to proceed, mhm? This is usually the hardest part, if you can believe that.”
He isn’t given a chance to speak as a cascade of pungent wine drenches his head and neck. His mind barely gets a chance to register the warm, sticky shock when he realizes that he can’t speak. He can’t breathe.
Darkness floods his vision, two knife-cut eyes shining deeply like cruelty manifested. Soon, they are gone, and he is forced to his knees, on his chest, gasping for air, every muscle in his abdomen spasming. Begging for relief, for the absence of this totality, this singularity of creation.
Scales fall from his eyes as the ground shakes. As a waterfall of hot, grainy gales pull his being apart and snap him in two. Undulating tessellations wobble in cresting pulses as the unknown pours down through his stomach, his bones, his eyes, his brain stem, his spine. Through his blood, saliva, tears and sweat.
A star shines brightly, high above his fractured face. Its facets glimmer with the heat of a wanting chasm, of the desire for overgrown creation. Nothing will satiate it, nothing will ever appease its abyssal appetite. It has been given the keys to the world and in judging it, it has deemed itself the inheritor of all that could ever possibly be called excess.
A nest of staining descends upon him and unmakes his concepts. His conceits. His condition, his concerns, his convictions. Even some of his previous contracts.
All of the stress squeezing what were once his muscle give, and squeal, and pour. His tongue is plucked and that nameless undoing that was sitting in the bottom of his stomach dissolves, swirling, soon to explode into a trillion pieces as unforgiving as the night sky.
This is a primal marking. A flurry of hooves rush by. This is a cosmic unraveling. Unseen skin turns itself outward. There is no purpose to sentient existence, but the drive for more overpowers this truth. This is what drove the first apes to cooperation, why the first civilizations sprung up—the individual, in competition with their own cavernous desires, cooperated with the collective so that they may have more.
And now he is a part of that, this blessed collective—
Dorian is an individual. No longer a person meandering the filthy stairwells of cheap apartments.
He is an individual who now serves the Snake of whom grants that which all life flows from: capital.
All of that which can be controlled, and even a little bit of some that can’t, because it will fall in line eventually.
He heaves.
Dorian heaves as the vision breaks and light floods his eyes again. Iris holds his hands back as his eyes twitch and he vomits little else but gutturally warm stomach acid.
“Steady, steady—”
For once her voice is soothing. Dorian can barely focus on anything with how double his seeing is, but his body obeys her firm grip. He tries to right himself.
As he calms, he slows. And as he slows, as the heat from his throat fades, a shame floods his face so much that he might as well melt.
“…Your reaction is normal,” Amos says flatly.
“It’s why we made you abstain from sustenance for as long as we did,” Iris follows, pulling him up from his knees. “There’s a good possibility you would have expelled all of your internal organs with this if there was anything in there.”
He doesn’t want to ask how that logic tracks. Fuck it, fuck this, fuck everything—please, just let him go home. Just let him get something to eat.
Ruprecht pulls out a white handkerchief and hands it to him. Dorian wipes the spit and butyric acid off his face and groans, wondering why Iris is the one by his side and not the others.
When he steals a glimpse at her face, it’s the most worried he’s ever seen her.
“Iris, sweetie, you know this always works out,” Percival says, smiling at her. She beckons Robert and Chrysophilius, and so they take him double-entendre instead.
“Yes, I’m aware…”
Dorian looks up at her and she smiles. It’s small, and close-lipped, but he’s realizing now it’s the first time he’s seen her genuinely do that.
“…Welcome aboard Mr. Sloan. I am so, so enthused to see what your future holds.”
He can only weakly beam back in response, cocked and halfway. Later, perhaps a month from now, he will find out the reason for her hesitation—he will find out then how big of a risk he was, how his existence was counted down to the most barest of wires until he moved people like the intercepted files said he could. And even then she still had to vouch for him in front of everyone else. Even then she still had to argue his case like a defense attorney at a lion’s trial.
After all, Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd. was a company that believed luck favored the loaded, not people like him. It’s how the statistics played out—the rich got richer, the blessed talented moreso. Having money was the biggest advantage of all. It had been a very, very long time since someone of his social standing was onboarded in-house—
But they weren’t the type of people to argue with results.
“Hey, mate, c’mon—” Chrysophilius says with a jab to his sides. “Get it together. You made it! We got food for you upstairs to celebrate.”
Robert nods. “You like caviar, yes? We brought about twenty different sampler plates for you to try. Sturgeon, sky fish, false sea serpent, kumiho coral, decarabia—that’s just to name a few.”
Dorian wheezes, wondering how easily vomit comes out of good suits. Knowing these people, they’d probably just buy new ones, right?
Right?
He stumbles into the elevator, watching everyone file in. It’s not at all a cramped situation—their growing smiles are infectious, actually. And louder than Dorian’s growling stomach.
“Goodness, Chaz went all out with the catering this time—”
Robert looks her way. “When does he not for you?”
“When Marius gets peeved with me.”
“That young man needs to relax sometimes, I swear,” Ruprecht murmurs. “Always acts like he is going to blow some kind of gasket.”
“I mean, when Iris asks Chaz to cook as many people as she does, I too would be worried about my restaurant’s reputation,” Amos adds monotonously.
Dorian screams to himself internally as Iris simply rolls her eyes and knocks her hand against his collar. “Anyways—look alive now. We’re here.”
We’re here.
Dorian doesn’t know how much he needed to hear that until a glut of golden light floods the elevator and dozens of beaming faces turn their heads.
“Hey, it’s the new guy!”
“Woah, he actually pulled through—”
“Hey, I’m walking here! …Sorry, had to say it once. You’re from Brooklyn, right?”
Without warning he’s thrust forward into a crowd of polished faces gathering around nearly like school children. It’s the professional coat of paint to their curiosity and amiableness that keeps them tidy, from their flurry of questions running into slimy rambunctiousness—but, shit, were people actually expecting him? They all…wanted him here?
What the hell was being said about him?
“…So he really was a golden goose,” a man with a black python slung around his neck says.
Dorian for some reason finds himself turning to that particular voice, with everyone else in the room following. One woman smiles with a hand over her mouth while another person with a parrot’s head giggles.
“Wow, he’s made an impression on the accountant already?” someone chirps.
“Hey, you’re forgetting about me,” another pipes up. “I work under Hogarth too!”
Dorian ignores both of those voices as he just stares at the man. Half of his face runs with patchy scars while his silver hair and balmy green eyes work overtime to impress upon him yet someone else to knock him off-kilter.
“I told you he’d be worth every second of our time,” Iris whispers down. “Dorian, this is Hogarth. He’s our lead accountant.”
Hogarth smiles flatly, putting out a hand. Dorian shakes it nervously, stomach screaming at him to get these pleasantries over with. This was taking too long.
“Been a while since we’ve onboarded an American,” Hogarth says, in a Midwestern accent that Dorian can’t quite place the precise origin of. “What a relief to know the younger generations can deal with a little hunger from time to time.”
“Ah, was it this rough on you?”
Hogarth smirks, as if he knows he’s keeping Dorian from the food with his curiosity and self-preservation. The latter is not really sure why that question just fell out of his mouth—but this person being just like him in a den of sharks seems…too good to pass up connecting with.
Maybe he could come into use later. Especially since he seemed like he had been working here a very long time. His suit was a bit like Amos’s, anachronistic but not quite unfashionable, similar to his shoes and his tie.
My fullest natural lifespan…
He recalls Percival’s words again thinking about how old Hogarth might be as he moves aside and points to the massive table behind him with a gentle visage and a nebulous grin.
“Nice try getting me to distract you from what you need tonight—”
Dorian shudders, like he’s done something wrong.
“Fill up before they sink their claws into you, kid.”
“…Thanks,” Dorian says, the ominous aura of that statement completely failing to register in his brain as all of the electricity in his head and legs going straight to his stomach, and his mouth.
A feverish expression spreads across his cheeks, which he shakingly covers with his arm in an attempt to remain professional. These may be his new coworkers, but they are not his family. Not yet, at least.
And family always get fed first.
He doesn’t hear the amused snickering and small talk trumpeting behind his back as he takes up Hogarth (really, the company)’s offer so fast it makes his head swim.
The rest of the night is a blur. There is talk, there is laughter, and there is so, so much food. For the others obviously, but Dorian didn’t realize he could eat so much. He is shoveling all kinds of magical things into his mouth in-between toasting, making chatter, and thanking his fortunes, thanking his new bosses, thanking his luck. His changed luck. Their starched suits, rings, diamond cuffs, and faith in his voice.
The festivities pass inoffensively by his ears. He thinks he hears a few comments about his background and how he’s not wearing a very fancy brand of tie, but those are thoughts to be dealt with tomorrow.
It is at the end of the party, when the smiles are winding down and the jovialities are looking to go back home to their London penthouses, when he can taste phosphorescent salt in his mouth from the caviar popping between his teeth, that he spots Percival. She is as ghostly as could be, a spirit standing by—throughout the party she had let Iris take center stage, toting Dorian around like he was a prize greyhound, amused the entire time and excitedly spouting off desires and plans she was hatching that Dorian knew he had no hope of following.
It is now when he is walking to the elevator, against an overstuffed dizziness and a bubbling chardonnay of overstimulation, that a deep, marble gratitude blossoms in his chest, a buzzing sensation of relief against a cacophony of emotions.
He watches Percival disappear as the elevator closes, singular in his mind. She is waving, she is satisfied, and she is content.
This is what his job is to be now. That face is what he is going to be chasing for the rest of his career.
Somehow, he feels like she knows his gratefulness, his infinite thankfulness, and his growing sense of desire in this new (to him) moneyed world.
But deep in his stomach, as his mouth tires and his body gnaws on the bounty it knows it is about to live in for the rest of his life, he feels like she is watching him.
She is watching him, and will forever be watching him.
If he’s getting paid millions, how much should he let that bother him?