Chapter Two, Divine Mercy
Spring of the 16th year AD, Baba’Yun’s lair
Soft Springtime aromas & the nectarine of blooming flowers transuded the air sifting through Mordaunt’s nostrils as he tread on with sharp pace through the hills & meadows which spread about Baba’Yun’s once humble hut. His fingers idly traced the runic lettering of Lilit’s letter, her urgent pressing for him to see their daughter seeping into his pores. Her etchings this missive, few but the runes dire: “Love ov stars, our moon needs you!”
The primordial mark branded long ago in his skin sensed proximity to its origin. It itched & groaned as he marched to the former witches’ residence. Now a veritable hidden tower of their tiny circle, tucked from coast & thicket; with stone & embrasure where a few keepers could notch invisible arrows to repel an army of looters. Despite the tender chirping of the birds in gleeful song of the season’s arrival this disheveled Champion heard only the drumming of his heart in wary anticipation of what news Selene’s mother held.
The timing of Lilit’s envoy could not have been more troublesome. Amid caring for his Estate, his begrudging wife, Portia, and his ‘children’ (the equally ugly Caedus & Callough) of adoptive crest and the grueling grind of ordeals & responsibilities which came with his position. She pled for him to come, abandon all obligations to see their Selene. His spirit churned in apprehension, the back of his brain striking bolts of horrible fears & fanciful visions -of Selene so haggard, pale & unmoving. All his thoughts streamed for her, usurping any concern for Portia’s chastisement at his disappearance or those fat, red twins he reluctantly inherited and barely managed to feign not loathing.
Approaching the rural yet regal home, the formerly shambling hut: transformed into a strange marvel of stone, a villa of its own. A testament to the wealth he’d gifted Lilit to have Selene a proper hearth to dwell. These funds came from his wife’s vast fortune from the mining venture her former husband built under the Vizzar. But given that he had been forced into this marriage by Drakkon to bridge the gap between the splintered, but potent, noble families of the Serpent no guilt anchored him. These redistributions, simply reparation for suffering the chains of his service by marriage.
Lilit waited for him before the threshold in anxious pose. Sorrow’s maiden was she, in her ebony gown. She shivered, despite the gleaming sunlight warming the earth. In her left hand she held thin paper exuding herbal scent, another sign to him of ill tidings to come from her lips. Her demeanor so shaken save for those sparse inhalations which burned away the mystic paper, wrestling with the wind in her fingers. This woman of woods & witchery stoking herbal cigarette to suppress the woe possessing her.
Goosebumps broiled Mordaunt’s skin as he embraced Lilit. Gripping her as much to quell concern within him as to quiet her unnerve. All the world swirled about, tethered tight to each other’s arms. While he did not love her with the fury & fire of which poets blather in honeyed dialects, that she was the mother of all the world’s purity in their Selene ever bonded them in spiritual respect.
The mother of moonlight bestowed grim welcome with bitter breath. “Forgive me for summoning you from so far away, so steeply! I would ne’er dream of disturbing your duties to the distant Lord but... Some black curse hath befallen our poor girl, Mordaunt. Befouls her! She is… ill with dire affliction. I wanted to heal her before sending a missive that might worry you over nothing, but she wanes gravely so suddenly. Fear takes mine heart, as I fear the gods shall take our blessed one from this world w-without a true chance to bloom. What damnation did we decry upon ourselves that our fate should be so plagued?”
Although her silverish mane veiled Lilit’s summer eyes, Mordaunt could feel the tide of tears surge as her vitae shook within the fold of his arms. Deathly silence announced its rule as that abhorrent unease inside sending tremors throughout. All the birds dropped their melodious tunes, abandoned to deafening gulf. Drowning out the raging of inner drum and making the idyllic tapestry abound wilt into null. He barely noticed words escape his quivering lips when the noise of his voice cut in. “Speak soundly & with purpose, Lil. I must know all that there is to glean of this ‘curse’ that I might pledge my soul to its lifting. Our Selene is strong. We must be the same for her, evermore so if the hour is as late as you say.”
She shuddered off their hug and glid over to the door. “Her curse might be that same which plagues the southern regions, spreading on western wings to steal our heart. We toil day & night to find a panacea among all our herbs, remedies & spells but thus far the gods hath turned their sights from our pleas. The Fates left us to watch her wither away in agony. I pray you can help redress her suffering. I can no longer consort the Muses nor hear that wisdom, that prophecy, which was once Baba’Yun’s.”
They entered the residence and immediately the truth of her concern found evidence by the innumerable concoctions, cauldrons, bottles & weird flowers assembled about the balmy chamber. There laid upon a silver-sheet bed: Selene, deprived of her youthful vigor by oppressive illness. Ashen curse stole away all colour from her visage, replaced her velveteen freckles with sickly boils. Her father dashed to her with more speed than any charge ever led. Placed a gentle hand about her brow. Her forehead was onset by heavy perspiration. So far gone that her fluttering eyelids did not allow her to recognize her own blood as he cared for her, so swept up by the wings of wicked affliction.
The world’s mass collapsed inside his chest. Collision with gravity strained his breath. His bones quaked foreboding shivers, coiling his spine in horror. His lungs wilted away to mirror his daughter’s deathlike mask. “Please, my silver Light, the Moon for which I shine! Hear me.” Mordaunt cupped his palms about her brow, near scalding, and gently kissed her forehead, not caring about the boils & blemishes that consumed her face. “You are the brightest orb that ever was and will be. I know you will persevere, dear one, for you are most beloved by the gods’ favor! Can you hear me?”
Selene made a whimpering chirp and moaned as her father hugged her. Spark of life’s fighting flame still danced inside her it seemed for she slowly struggled to bring up her own weary arms around him in their embrace. She made to whisper a response but all that came was a gurgling gasp, a hushed plea for something she could no longer voice.
“Shh, my little light. Do not expend what strength is needed to beat this on me. Know that I would give all for you. We will break through this dread spell and see you spread those luminous wings of yours once more. Just hold on...” Mordaunt shushed her with his finger before drawing paternal kiss on her blistered forehead. Then he turned to her mother. “Have you anything that will help?”
“We are in want of proper potion. My sister and I conjured our ends, yet she continues to fade. There is this that forestalls it,” she said with shaky song as her talons reached for a bubbling green concoction, “and another here as last resort, a means of easing of her pain.”
Lilit sunk into his shoulder, wet with siren tears. “We hath afforded her enough time to see her father again at least. But this may be but our last chance to bid her goodbye. She is at the mercy of the gods alone. All we might do is perform the last rite-”
Mordaunt shoved the herbalist-matron back. Slamming her into shelves behind, breaking vials and containers. He attempted to level his tone to cold logic, but his temper seeped through barriers of temperance. “Were it not that I do not wish to leave our Selene without her mother, I would present a mortal rebuke on the spot for such betrayal of faith. How can you be so defeatist to surrender her soul to first foul signs of circumstance?! Nay! There must be a way.”
“Would you seek Ty-Drasil’s tribute? Our ways hath offered our moon more time but she may not last another day and sadly not enough to sail the Ruun and reach the gods of the mountain.”
“Bloody gods above and all devils & Hels below: hear that I shall save her somehow!” Mordaunt snatched the emerald bottle, pocketed it in his satchel and scooped up Selene in his arms. Marching back towards his steed with her he declared. “I will bring her to the Temple. Where you fail the shamans shall succeed in Selene’s salvation. They will summon the sun’s love and lift this blackened curse! The gods will not be so selfish as to take the most beautiful of their seeds from the soil of our earth!”
With that the Champion rode off at brisk pace. His sickly daughter tied to the saddle before him. Lilit offered one last prayer up to the sky before they disappeared beyond the meadows along arduous trail...
The Temple, a week later
A colosseum of stars enclosed upon Mordaunt as he trekked the mountainous path to Ty- Drasil’s peak. From their distant thrones carved of the void the gods themselves spectated this night’s venture with keen glow. He closed his eyes and beseeched their mercy, should any be attentive to his suffering. Praying for starlight to burn through sleep deprived lids & alight hope by spiritual Sight. But no such signal branded his seal. Peering back at the Lords above, the rival Serpent constellation of Zar’Rion snaked over their starry laurels. Its tongue licked spring, poisoning the tide with belated winter.
Selene, cradled softly in his arms, bobbed along with his rapid pace. The wind wrapped about her tiny frame and groomed her hair, concealing the ghastly taint of disease behind wayward strands as her father gazed with growing concern. The way through Moribond mountains was tempestuous and murky that desperate evening, as though the grim glare of the stars, those cold spectators, cursed his steps with dismaying doubt. But he would be damned not to make it through for his Selene.
The route to that consecrated Temple could have proved a stony labyrinth to suffocate his hope were it not for the sigils & eternal braziers still tended to along the path. Towards the sacred seat under watchful peaks, all refusing to crumble to entropy or avalanche & remaining stalwart obstructions over the northern horizon. His concern for anything but the existential gambit was blockaded. As if those stubborn massifs & tors caged him to this dogged chase. His daughter’s sickness cursed his mind, though no boils yet affected him. Madness burrowed in him across the voyage. Infuriating sprites and impish thought forms manifested from the ichor of exasperation & blame.
These refractions of peeling mind spat chastisement, mocking him. “If you’d only brought her in, let her stay close & warm, this shivering spell would not hath befallen her yuletide passage! Her spring blooms with buboes and black rot more befitting the villain, in you, that left her to Malderath’s curse!”
“Alas, here be a ‘champion’ without the vitality to defend the ones he claims close to heart!” Taunted another plague phantom, “Hark how his courage appeared all too late! How he waited too long, idling in false grandeur, to redeem his love & valor! He wilts against futility’s tide!”
This discordant chorus of fevered wraiths kept him company at least. Alongside the frail groans from the bundled girl. Selene burned against his chest & seared their shared saddle, even as cool rains dampened hurried journey. No water, no witch’s resilient ice blocks nor noxious elixir availed her draining flame. Foul lethargy stole her from him no matter how tightly he clutched her back to his brace. When she did briefly awake from malign cocoon, she offered no new insight to nor awareness of her father.
Selene only screamed. Screamed as well as she could with the rotten syrup set in her throat, oozing over any attempts to match the pain with volume of outcry. Shrill utterances leaked from the child’s stifled voice, scraping against the clusters of disease bubbling in her esophagus. Scared ramblings whose only understandable words had no rhyme, reason nor recognition to reality. Calling for faeries and friends who weren’t there. Crying delirium before falling into afflicted slumber.
Yet strangely, as horrible as Selene’s fevered wails were, they brought him small comfort in knowing that the torpor had not claimed her whole. He still had time for a miracle, though the gap closed quickly. The earth hungered for his hope to fall and fertilize its life from death. Blood flowers to bloom of funeral soil. But he would not give her to the ground that easily. No brigands, courtly obligations & lethal responsibilities, inclement weather, or natural wall could stop him from seeking that holy sign of her healing.
Only the Elder Keeper, she who communes with Fates, Muses and Spirits entwined in her breast, could call upon the greatest of forces to intervene on Selene’s behalf. While his Lord was told to perform rites of resurrection and such miracles, Ligeia might have the sympathy of the old gods. While Drakkon would surely only scorn him or ignore his daughter’s infirmity when besieged of superior need to protect his pride and martial might.
Ascending the Ty-Drasil steps he found Ligeia’s lair distant from his expectation of a humble shamanic hut. Presentation inverted presumption, from modesty to a singular and even warlike majesty: a precariously perched spire that stretched its gray neck over the edge of the cliff. This tiny fortress erected paranoic isolation in him, that the fabled grace of the old tribes he’d once forsworn was as enclosed in emptiness as the banished serpent cults.
The sparse sentinels skittering the way flee at his flashing the star of Imperium about his neck. Reaching the door, Selene’s shudders & squeals rose worse with passing minute. He pries her jaw & pours her the last drops of green brew. The potion barely dams the flow of disease at all. That it may halt corruption before finding healing seal proved a mere fiction.
“Enter, guest! Come forth, ally of Imperator to your humble host!” Called the crone. The door opened and the champion met the shriveled shaman. Her skeletal shape creaking in the chair supporting her. A heavy cane steadied as Ligeia rose to greet her guest. Her cloudy eyes drew to the small girl dangling in the man’s arms. Maternal empathy enfolded the dying Selene with wrinkled palm draped over her roasting forehead. Platinum mane became pallid tufts shaved by sickness. “This is what my sentinels meant by the ‘dire haste’ in which you requested my audience. Now I understand why. This poor girl is afflicted with black blight that sunders quarter harvest of our world. You come seeking a cure?”
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
“I seek salvation. For her. Be it from you or the gods you speak to. She is my daughter. You, shaman, may be capable of thaumaturgy beyond Drakoni priests’ spheres. My soul is knotted with hers. I beseech you: save us both this eve! I shall give whatever must be made as sacrament or tribute, if only Selene is given a second breath of life!” Mordaunt’s composure disintegrated into ash of rue. Pleading weakness bleating from every pore as he lay his daughter upon the obsidian tablet by braziers. Then his knees squirmed in shudder. Trembling, and tear-wrapped, he collapsed to the stone of Ligeia’s tower, sobbing soul-stringing appeal.
“I shall do what I can, Fury’s Champion. But unless mine eyes are darkened by twilight’s approach, I fear that the gift of salvation the gods may offer her from this pit of poison is the mercy of deliverance to their hearth. There is no need to pay me, for this is a matter of spirit & mortality, something only the astral weavers of all human fate - our webbed stage of causality – may grant. If they aid, they may judge what considerable cost...for even miracles come at a price, and a father’s love may only inspire the gods to move so much. We are ever at their mercy.”
Mercy?! Mordaunt spat into the brazier as the shaman focused on Selene. To her he spoke slim hope. “Help her persist through this and she shall earn the strength to endure anything else this vile veil can vex her with.”
“Have your wounds bolstered your brawn champion or caused sinews to surcease? Squandered to scar tissue over fleshy mold that gives muscle over to Malderath’s strain?” Ligeia inquired without asking true answer. “Alas, we wade in the waters of chance.”
“I shall conduct the Ritual of Revival to beseech all skyward powers to bring her from this brink. But know ‘tis a ceremony worked only thrice in our shared history. I implore you leave us. Pray, go to the scrying stone overlooking Moribond’s expanse. Allow heart’s speech to soar to the ears of heaven’s kin.”
Mordaunt obeyed. Planted himself on the precipice that overlooked the endless, empty sky. The night winds snared him in spiraling coil though the rains died a short death. His soul hovered over the rim upon invisible current. For hours innumerable he folded inward in deep prayer, offering up all to the ethereal, if capricious, ocean above. He lost himself to this surreal purgatory, dancing between nihil & immense faith, unaware of his own chanting whispers nor the discordant wailing of Ligeia.
The Elder’s surprisingly firm voice, possessing the profound aspect that defined her as a caller of spirits, crooned and cawed. A warbling alchemy of desperate sound. By the time the invocation hollowed out the first glimmers of imminent dawn cracked the astral arena from where the gods stood witness. Yet the small hours remained. As did the smell of returning storms.
The baying chorus of the nocturnal roll carried Ligeia’s call across the tower. Violet clouds, half-fused with the hues of the aurorae they leeched, took formation to siege the peak. Mordaunt’s stomach retched for answer. Against the onslaught of unknowing came imminent splash of heavenly, yet intemperate, sobs and the ghostly gales’ screeching back at Ligeia’s awful chaunting. He heard no cries from his daughter and waited no more to hear any pleas for her on his behalf. Patience beaten back by squall of accursed Hels (or interlocked, unifying and malicious, causality ordained of the Fates’ imperceptible scribes) he barged into the Keeper’s ritual chamber, eyes agleam with ravenous need.
But that compulsion to see her, that wish of restoration, crashed against ghoulish sight instead. He sank with the anchor dragging all essence to infernal depths. Selene lay still, no longer writhing with spastic bolts of agony. She moved not at all. Her breath summoned away; stolen by Helwind gusts. A pale shroud drawn over her face, prepared for astral journey by ashen veil.
Ligeia sat in mourning by her side, surrounded by a halo of incense smoke and dying embers of nearby braziers. No stream of air emanated from beneath that funeral pall. “I could not heal her... The gods did not grant me their true Touch, did not reignite her spark of Life... She is gone, Mordaunt. No longer in a place where our hands can reach her.” Real sadness swathed Ligeia, limping over to the girl’s father to offer shrunken hand to his shoulder. “But moon-wax & Andrasil root allowed her a few easy breaths and paces of rest before the final hearth.”
All mirth repressed in Mordaunt’s miserable soul receded, seeking after Selene’s, fled beyond the mortal shore by grave sail. Frozen, comprehending only half of her apology, the shaman tried to temper the brunt of woe. “I cannot deign to comprehend the pain this tragedy brings, child. But if I might offer one consolation in this grave hour: allow yourself to respect her journey, her ascension, from this prison of pain.”
Mordaunt’s fist clamped around his emblematic amulet, pulling on it in a dull panic, while devastation of the world barraged his ears. With such force of denial & anger at all he tore his fingertips into the talisman. Then snatched up the ritual tablet, etched with feckless healing inscription, held with hate & blood, as splinters stabbed into his skin. “The gods turned their gaze... ignored a child’s plea – my child! No ‘gods’ worth revering would let the most innocent & brilliant blossom of all humanity perish in insurmountable anguish! Servitude for sake of suffering! Indentured to death & fortune’s malicious flail!”
In a daze he stepped menacingly to Ligeia. His blonde mop, damp with sweat & tears, cast a malevolent shadow upon him which bore into her. His broken elongated nose jutted forth farther from his face as if to accuse the Elder of treacherous failure. “You too let a child die this day! You brought us only snake oil and illusory hope! How dare you preach to me about the gods’ plan! When they and their servant damned my daughter to that which she did not deserve! I curse you, keeper of lies!”
“Tame your rage, boy!” Ligeia did not slink away. Having inherited that indomitable Willpower possessed by her martyred predecessor in Gaahl she shot back against his oozing ire. “You chastise an old woman in late hours. Demand her dare catching blight. Then denounce the Highest and their servants because the Fates do not bend to you. Do not curse the gods so vainly! Dither before spitting damnation against they who sculpted you from dust and offered freely the chance of life. Their will is unshakeable, unspeakable. Even if unknowing to us of mortal mind, never are their plans enacted without Purpose or Justice entwined in the binds they weave. Our strife is inevitable, they hath laid it out so. The Hels blow against us, & yet we must persist without our backs breaking or succumbing to baseness & blasphemy. If you allow this black rot to spread throughout your soul, then it is you who shall be damned!”
Taking another step, he speared death glare at her. “You proclaim my daughter’s agony Justice?! The whim of Astraea?! If you speak for godly mercy, then I shall be without compassion for their ilk and yours!” With bestial growl Mordaunt lunged at the shaman. Wrangled her by the neck against the farthest wall of her spire. “If you feel this gods’ heart’ is so enviable why linger on this pitiful rock? Why should I not grant you the same deliverance, the same care, as Selene?!”
Mordaunt released his hold enough for Ligeia to spit retort. “See past this torment to the firmament of all... Selene is with them, soon to find abode on their astral shores.”
“Gods’ greedily snatching a young flower from their garden that they can keep its withered husk for their petty need?! Nay! She must live on with me – on this earth!”
“Perhaps the gods hath cursed this earth? This rot reeks of our sins which spawned it. The gods damned this world and left us to our own corruptive devises the moment we hailed a pretender – a heretic of false origin enthroned – as Lord! Drakkon is the source of all our suffering and all that which blights our people! Surely you must feel that truth echo in your gut.”
Mordaunt let a little mercy show, granting Gaahl’s successor a sliver more of breathing room. Room which she used to hail prosecution. “The muses branded you their hero, I see it in your aura. Yet you gave your soul to the man who usurps the sovereignty of the true gods and soils our world with avarice-wrought plots. Can you not see the plague as sign of Divine truth? The blight is our penance, they say. A demand from above to awaken to the fact that we upraised a devil on the pedestal of holy power. Instead of honoring their laws we crowned a conman.”
Mordaunt pushed Ligeia out from the tower onto treacherous platform. Here, where Mordaunt prayed for hours without answer, she hung by precarious course. Death drew about her, but she did not quiver in tone as she admonished her accuser. He could threaten her, but she would not step an inch from the podium of her ideals & dignity.
“Horrid penance for terrible crime. Empyrean wrath touched your child because her father was so close to the blasphemer, Drakkon. This, the terror that consumes so many good lives. This horror: the spawn of his reign. The plague was not the first sign, only the one you noticed. I too once thought his cause Just. But tis only delusion of authority bound solely by lie. The origins of our great conqueror and divider are not so holy.”
Mordaunt loomed over her. His towering wrath taller than her prison tower. He held the totem, where request of healing was carved, over her head as his impudence bashed her ears. “I sailed the Ruun, scaled Moribond & Elderath to reach you. Yet I find only charlatans; so brash they accuse others and shame the soul of my Selene with insult! I should throw you from this rock where you hide from your fellow swindlers. Let you fly on those wings of faith!”
Ligeia refused to step back. No more. Thin frame of withered tree defying winter’s victory. “Killing me will not lift this hex of pestilence. Nor restore your Selene to life. All that you gain from snuffing out what is left of my dwindling flame is further loss. We are only just opening our eyes, allowing ourselves to see what tyranny we let in. Divided by the shadow of your service and scheming scoundrels among our own here. Shamefully, we are far from lifting this curse, and the crown from the head of the plague-bringer. No successor have I chosen among Elders to become Keeper. Ty-Drasil is crippled with inaction. A condition familiar to your Empire. Many here wish for my fall. Do not thrash our hope in the face of nature’s worst aspect and mortal claimant over us all, in Death.”
“You speak ill of the Living Lord? Should I not thrash you in the name of Imperium?!” Yet Mordaunt’s ears ached to her hear blasphemy, yet his nostrils welcomed the acrid truth, knowing the emperor’s title so hollow to voice.
“That Lord waves sign of great sickness! He cursed you!” Ligeia’s elegance was steadfast. Righteous wisdom infused her plea for mercy, not for herself but for generations yet to bloom as the one whose chance was threatened, roped by fingers about her neck. “The rotten light shining perversion can be cast out and cleansed by purifying sunlight! Only if this temple and those beacons of opportunity, learning and guidance fall not into the shade of immoral vanity. Be not another dread knight of Drakkon! Do not come to represent that same darkness as bygone magisters who mocked your misery enchained to them. Be unlike our seditious sages, who, mimic Vizzari style inquisitions! Binding their fellows to fear & the temptation of tyranny.”
What iconoclastic inversion of chivalry resided in Mordaunt allowed the woman her last grace to preach her piece. Yet it was no humiliating plea, but a sermon staged of stoic’s resistance. “If you will turn from this madness and look at the scales and the sanctum behind & below, you will see how the distant Primus among his peers builds up antithesis to our legacy. While their monetary master is remote, through gluttonous sway our holy house falls to decadent and hedonic estate bought by his treasures. That conniving Magus Albrecht of fell invention will rally wyrms to elect him. We had barely a decade of peace under your lord before more innocents padded the pyres and pits. We must dam up these despots’ visions from bewitching more minds here and far, fresh & weathered alike. Else those wretches will desecrate all our living kin. How would such a worm-eaten world be a gift to your daughter’s ghost?”
“Why should I give a damn? Never mind what is worse for your graceless temple. If your holy seat lacks the zeal to preserve pure spirits from waning let yours be damned!” Mordaunt did not blink repentance, strangling her thin throat with unfettered hate. “This despicable plane can burn to ash for all I care! I lost the last orb of light & purpose. Only she made me care to become a better man. Without her there is nothing to stake any future on. So, I state this clearly: Sod your ‘pious’ politicking, sod your vain bastard gods & snuff your ‘holy flame’! If I must become a monster to enact vengeance for the evil wrought upon me since birth, then so bloody be it!”
“My – fail-ing – was – not calling out the deception once I knew the truth! A sin you share – with me, champion! We fall – all of us – together...” The crone rallied final flail against this heretical tempest in the man. Her dangling legs kick at him, to send him from the edge. Clamps claw & aged tooth into whatever she could hold of him, skin, or garb. That they would topple together should he pursue that hate and the cliff to this end. To no avail.
This champion, unchaining his shadow, slapped away any sense she could further batter him with invocation tablet. “I shall stand in Judgement of myself, alone! I shall Judge the world and all the stains it’s left upon this tired vessel of mine. I am my own monster, a cyclone of choosing! I am the instrument of mine own destiny! O, feckless Keeper! I deem you the first of the diseased faithful to fall to my Justice.”
He howled madly. His chin snapped back, unleashing ugly bout of laughter, as he shoved Ligeia. His hostage spotted unwitting tears wetting her captor’s cheeks, scarring them with the sullen swell of denial. This refutation of the world’s madness ruptured the surface of his sanity, taking plunge into deathly declaration. “You lot, the spiritualists & prophets of invisible gods, are worse than vultures! Such pretense of compassion for those who suffer beneath blind canopy of these ‘gods’ and ‘heavenly’ spirits; whispering in your ears about how they wish for you to live in ever grander retreats and more ostentatious robes! Down you topple, with the rubble of your dubious delusions! That hath ne’er saved a soul in all this mortal mold’s decades, only filled mass graves with plague-stricken children unsaved by petty prophecies!”
Before he’d spoken this grim conclusion for her fate, Ligeia saw the inevitable and readied herself. As best as one could when thrust through death’s threshold. The crone drew in the voice of the wind, siphoning that last cadence of air all about their shrine atop that mountain peak, her constant cradle in life. Then let out a shrill, soul-splitting curse as only one trained in the throaty cries of the shaman’s calls could emit. Continuing in the till of tides as her frame felt the hammering bane of runic tablet wrenched against her.
The wind at her back defying Mordaunt’s push was not enough to keep her from the fall. Ligeia toppled down lethal length of the spire. Whether swallowed up by the sea in its raucous appetite or left bent and broken on one of the angry crags below, he did not know. Her obscene curse drowned swiftly. Save for a wisp over the choppy, violet storm, once mere shimmers at edge of the sky, waging assault over the mountains.
Mordaunt saw the purplish shroud on the march over the peaks to conquer the Temple. He seized the spell tablet, unsheathed dusky blade, and carved curse upon it. Blood slipping unto stone, as ink of ire, graved assault against heaven & blistered earth. By those flickering bolts & storm-spears Mordaunt announced them his adversary, manifested in nature itself. He cast the curse into the sea & thrust blade to atmosphere with challenge, infusing retributive desire into the tip of the sword. Proclaiming:
“Reap spite this hour, ye murderous gods! Hearken me, Hels & Fates! Be ye apathetic or malicious I stand forth to challenge thy wisdom of the world! To interrogate thy barbarous laws in favor of mine own Judgement! I raise steel against false lords and demand reason for this pain! Strike me with an arrow from thine armory or else flee from the path I carve! I rise above the beast that I was. No longer a hound of the gods & empires mankind pisses away. I am reborn of bared Will. I shall wrestle Thunder & Flame from the god’s torch! Raise myself as claimant to heaven’s throne! A mortal to rule for needs of my kin without mind for godly wants!”
The mountains & seas shouted back his impertinent pride. Echoing his boldly blasphemous exclamations from their abyssal bellies, conjuring through this resonance a ghostly chorale of his temper, repeated dissonantly. As he rejected the gods, spurning their seats in the sky, the gales abound that windswept peak became as fierce as the boiling fever in his veins. Every bone blenched and muscles trembled at tempest thrown forth.