INTERLUDE 7C: THE MISTAKE

“Always will we forget to wonder: why am I not what I was? Defining others is easy – always inaccurate, always missing the crucial detail that transforms character to consciousness, object to subject. Yet the self? The self is the true mystery. The only one you must solve, in order to move forwards.”

– from ‘The Syth Codex’, 19:355-361

31st Mortifost, 998 NE

They stood in a ring in their white robes, thirty-two of them, quivering as they held hands. The room was featureless, sacred – white floors, white walls, white ceiling. The radiance filling the five-sided hall was unnaturally bright, a spell bound to the very air, so that they were forced to squint if they looked about at their fellows – but most kept their eyes closed, teeth clenched against the pain. Their hoods were deep and their plain masks hid their faces, but Eneleyn knew. She had once stood in their place. She understood the fear, and had come out the other side.

But these were not victims. Each of them knew what was coming. The shared sense of anticipation was a physical weight, pressing them all into a silence broken only by heavy breathing, the nervous shuffling of feet.

Who would be taken? Who would be spared?

At length the midnight chime started, and Eneleyn stepped into their midst, the thirty-third of their august company. She, like the rest of them, went barefoot in this place, clad in the same robes; but unlike them she wore no mask, and in her hand she held a sword: it was short and lightweight, barely more than a prop, but it was sharp and she clutched it firmly in her fingers, pointed at the floor to her side. The heart-blood of the sacrificial lamb, the virgin taken from the streets of North Lowtown, was still running freely down the edge of the blade and pouring in a constant stream from the tip. As she slowly made her way to the centre of the circle, she stained the pure white stone with a thick line of crimson.

Now that the ritual had begun, the blood would not stop flowing – not for so long as the conditions were still met.

“O Mekesta, Radiant Mother of the Night, I beg thee: birth thy servant; usher forth thy spite out from thy womb. Let the Night be free.” Eneleyn intoned the words in Infernal, touching the steel point of the sword to the floor in the very middle of the room. “Bring unto me the source of darkness, the very light of thy midnight sun.”

She left the tip against the stone and continued walking until she’d exited the circle, her friends raising their arms into an arch to let her pass. All the while, she continued scraping the blade on the floor, producing an ear-splitting whine. Then she turned, moving three paces counter-clockwise about the ring of believers, before entering into their midst once more.

Time and again, when she reached the middle of the chamber she invoked the blessing of a different dark deity, scraping the sword, creating the shrill sound that was the harbinger of the demon.

“… O Vaahn, Bright Father of the Grave, swallow our offering up into thy realm; install the carcass upon thy lofty helm. Snare it where the shadows are sharp and the deserts sing softly of a dawn they shall never witness. Hold it tight till all the worlds come undone…”

The blood formed a great pattern of lines, a web about and between their feet, linking the participants, their vital sources, their souls.

“… O Yane, Smiling Father of Sorrows, impart this meagre weapon with thy wickedness and will. Let it open the door. Beckon our Mother in and in us bind her babe. Let it bring thee and thy Father thy fill.”

At last, she halted in the centre, the geometric design completed. Slowly, she turned on the spot, regarding her fellow cultists solemnly – then she brought up the sword, holding the small cross-piece of the weapon in both her hands and directing its point at her own heart.

“Blood for blood, for tears unending,” Eneleyn declared; then she fell forwards onto the blade.

Rather than the icy, intrusive hardness of the steel in her breast, she felt only the euphoria that came with the spell’s successful casting. This had been her own test, and she always passed: the penalty for failure was death.

As was the reward for success.

One of the thirty-two, a woman shapely-enough that even in these nondescript, baggy robes her gender could be recognised, collapsed to the floor suddenly, white robe red.

It’s Uthia, Eneleyn thought. Farewell, old friend.

Uthia died in silence. Her heart had been pierced clean-through, vast quantities of her blood gushing out around her – and, in the middle of the ring, Eneleyn slowly withdrew the blade from her chest.

She grinned as she did it. She always grinned. She didn’t feel happy, exactly; the elation was a physical thing, taking hold of her and moving her muscles for her.

It was just the done thing. The others had to see it. See it and know what they were partaking in: one of the darkest of dark rites.

“My lords and ladies; I present our bestowal!” she cried. Then, again in Infernal, she spoke the final phrase:

“Step forth, drinker of souls! Step forth into a world of bright reflection, mirrors to be darkened, broken.” She looked down, confused. “Step forth with-“

That was when it all started to go wrong.

The sounds. The sounds were the worst part. Nobody should have ever been forced to listen to a heart exploding within a chest – piercing flesh with a sword was almost inaudible in comparison.

This was no wet thunk – just a deep pop, like a single beat on a dreadful drum never to be struck –

And it was a sound that went about the room in series, one after another after another.

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Eneleyn looked on in mounting horror as every single one of her fellow cultists dropped down dead, bloodless, clean. They just appeared to be falling down asleep – but the sounds… the open eyes…

When will it be my turn? she questioned silently, fearfully. What is happening?

But at last, as was supposed to have happened when she called on the ‘drinker of souls’, the blood-pattern on the floor activated. Scarlet fire rose up almost to the ceiling, flames guttering under the pressure of a hell-wind that could be neither felt nor heard on this plane.

Then the flickering tongues were gone, leaving behind –

“Good eventide, summoner.”

A woman was there suddenly, crouching upon the corpse of the first to have died. Her face was eerie – her skin was as white as snow and her head was almost prism-shaped; her eyes were pitch black. The demon was hunkering down, and despite her lankiness she looked comfortable there, squatting in a strange, contorted position, clawed feet digging into the flesh of the dead sorcerer.

Purple fur with dark spots covered her from foot to neck. Her lips were dusky, shades of pink and lilac. Upon her midnight hair rested a band of jet, and in her hairy hand she held a golden whip, ancient gobbets of meat clotted about the thongs.

“Y-your Grace,” Eneleyn mumbled, the sheer panic seizing hold of her muscles. The proper form of address for a demon of such stature almost deserted her. “Your Grace, I –”

“You were not expecting me.” The voice was tinkling, the tone one of delight, enjoyment. “Yet I have awaited this day since my birth in the blackness, since my eyes first opened on the fire.”

“But… how…”

She tore her eyes from the hideous face, looking around.

The thing shrugged. “There were enough here prepared to die to offer up proper sacrifice.”

“Are – are you bound to me, your Grace?”

The great eldritch laughed, a cursed laughter that made Eneleyn shudder.

“Oh, no, my child,” she replied. “I but slew that which you sought to bring forth, and took its place. I was created ere your city had its walls, bound ere the fall of the Five… I may not be dominated – not by such as you.” The triangular face tilted slightly, the arch-fiend cursorily glancing across the body-strewn chamber, before the infernal gaze once more settled on Eneleyn. “The Sinphalamax has all my fealty.”

The Sinphalamax… The sorceress had only encountered this word written-down, scripts scrawled by the pens of madmen across the blank last pages of ancient tomes, on the reverse of scrolls and in the margins of sorcerous texts. Sinphalamax.

She only had a vague concept of what her conjurations had allowed onto the material plane – but a vague concept was enough. This thing… it could despoil nations. It could level armies. Even the champions were going to have serious, serious trouble dealing with it.

She copied the demon, looking around at the bodies. Dozens of men and women, each of whom she’d known personally, her friends and co-workers. This ritual had been designed to impart into the survivors a portion of the eldritch’s power, after the fashion of an arch-sorcerer joining with their summons. But that wasn’t going to happen now. They were all dead.

Eneleyn knew it was her responsibility. It was the first lesson her teachers taught their pupils. She’d spent twenty years of her life drumming it into the heads of a generation of up-and-coming sorcerers, and the next ten making sure her they did the same with their own apprentices.

I brought it forth. I send it back.

She knew the price. She knew what this had cost her.

She brought the sword-tip up to her chest once more.

The thing only smiled again, not approaching even as much as an inch. Moving closer would only hasten Eneleyn’s blow.

“Do not end your own life. This would be a waste; my return to Mund is fixed. Please, lay aside the blade. I would like to discuss another option with you, if you’re amenable?”

All too aware of the temptations such a creature might offer, Eneleyn laughed.

It was a self-mocking laughter, she realised, a final grim little gesture to the world she was about to leave.

“Do you truly believe that is your only option? Self-destruction?” The eolastyr sighed. “Come, now, my sister. You have lived such a life. You can achieve more with the powers of the Daughter of the Sinphalamax, so much more than you dreamed…”

The creature approached, a single step, and the old sorceress backed away an equal distance. She pressed the tip of the sword into the flesh just under her sternum, felt the blood flow –

Felt the temptation.

The powers of the arch-demon… mine?

The demon had halted again the very moment Eneleyn started to stab herself.

“What you speak of is possession. I do not even have your name – your Grace.”

None of my tattoos are going to aid me against this.

The fiend only shrugged, her nonchalance terrifying.

“What you speak of,” Eneleyn grated out, “it’s as good as death!”

She gritted her teeth tightly, and gripped the hilt with white-knuckled hands as she prepared to throw her heart down onto the sword-point – it dipped deeper into her skin, a bitter hardness about which her flesh erupted –

This is my ending.

“Death?”

The musical voice wasn’t troubled – only amused – and it gave her pause. She froze there, in the moment of impaling.

“What a trifling thing,” the creature went on. “But death is not good, little sister. And no, I do not misunderstand – it is your own misunderstanding. When you have consented to join with me, you may come to look upon death as a distant concern, undeserving of your attentions. Certainly few things upon this plane might encompass our annihilation, and most-assuredly time would not be our enemy. You would be released from the vicissitudes of ageing. You would have youth and strength. I know what you’re thinking – what use is youth and strength, when your goals are not your own.” The arch-demon smiled. “Let me reassure you, our goals differ only by so much as a hair. Primarily I seek to hide. Won’t you be a good sister?”

Eneleyn paused, considering, in spite of all she knew. It was easy, so easy to say, ‘Just do it, end it now’. She’d always told herself that when the moment came, she’d be ready. In her line of work, this kind of situation was an ever-present possibility.

But it came as a bit of a shock, when your chance of survival dropped from ninety-seven percent to zero.

It was strange. She’d always expected – even anticipated, almost with enthusiasm – this day. Yet the time of truth was upon her and she found she was not equal to the task. When she’d looked forward to this eventuality, it’d always been an amorphous destiny, shadows and shapes, nothing more than surreal. She’d thought an aura of carelessness, carefreeness would come over her, a gift from Nentheleme in her final seconds. Now that the moment had come, despite her advanced years, despite the promises being lies – she did not want to die. Did not want to go on into the shadowland, to see what lay beyond.

Not yet. Not this way.

And the fiend knew it. Just like it knew she had once been a little sister, back before the silkpox took her siblings. The demon knew it all, and used it against her…

The instant she felt her resolve weaken, her nerve give out – even before she pulled the half-inch of cold steel free of her torso – the demon’s smile once more split her white, triangular face.

“Oh, you do please me,” the arch-fiend murmured, stepping closer now with fluid grace and not one whit of hesitation. “Yes. Yes, I have you now. We’ll do such things together, child.”

She let the sword clatter to the blood-smeared floor. The demon’s unnatural, impossible visage came closer, the purple-black fur rippling as she prowled between the bodies, clawed feet tapping on the stone.

Eneleyn had to close her eyes against the sight, and within seconds she could feel the thing’s breath on her face.

“And so, Mistress Eneleyn Arithos, will you consent to join with me? Will you draw of my essence, as I draw of yours?”

She opened her eyes. The pitch-black orbs of the demon were all she could see – she was face-to-face with this walking, talking horror – the harbinger of salvation came close enough to kiss her, suck the soul right out of her lungs.

There was only one answer.

“I will, your Grace.”

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