XXI
Éphémère
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> “They say that the moon,
>
> That Lucifer’s Left Eye,
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> Knows when a man is to die
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> For through that looking
>
> Glass in the night sky,
>
> Azazel spies.”
—Traditional nursery rhyme throughout the New World cir. 680 After God’s Death.
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If the moon knew, it did not say.
The Womb-That-Weeps-Red was silent and mute as God Himself tonight, uncaring of what happened below.
I knew not when Jespar ‘the Hagfish’ Hecânsios would die but I did know how.
The Sleeping-Revenant was aroused from its slumber by my will, sparking the machinerie of my scabbard alive. Gears turned, silent beneath a cloak black as sin, and I tapped at the bottom of the chape to tip the locket forward.
My sword slid out and I grasped it by the grip and then by the shoulder, twirling it about in my dexterous fingers until it rested as it should in my palm—iron to lodestone. The weight of Ashen comforted me just the same as the burden on the back of the mule; which was to say that it weighed me down with exhaustion and soul-deep weariness that had seeped into the bone, into the marrow, and then the marrow of my marrow; you get the gist of it.
Jespar was a slippery hagfish, alright, having run me haggard such that even a vampyre whose breath is known to be endless is rendered ragged. He was what we called an ‘éphémère’ or mayfly; more spirit than man, having been born dead under the omen of Sathariel and arisen back to life. His skin was not pallid but instead porphyric-purple as if he was one big bruise, all of his hide tanned with the birthmarks of those touched by Azazel’s threshold, by the pale between this world and the next.
He ran like the wind, the shadows embracing him as if to welcome him as a living wraith among the Infernal Host. Whenever I thought I had caught him, his form sublimated into insubstantial black smoke; from out of a body of darkness he would scamper back into Naranca only for our chase to start once more.
Mayflies do not need to breathe and do not drown but can neither be in contact with large bodies of water for too long lest their reflection claim them and in doing so release the doppelgänger to walk upon the earth clothed in their stolen flesh—Sathariel was the Apostle of Thievery and so, as they say, blood calls to blood. It was a strange sort of curse, being omen-touched, manifesting entirely random-like as only some are claimed and the rest spared; no rhyme and no reason beyond the fickle and petty evil eye of the Night-God’s Envy.
Jespar slipped and this time the black did not welcome him; he lay sprawled and innervated, finally, upon the cobbles. This was the first time that I had gotten a good look at him and his weird, d’yabelish eyes: the sclera was blacker than pitch, intersped by bright-scarlet capillaries; the iris was a vibrant xanthous-yellow like sulphur and dandelions; the pupil was that of a goat, a rectangular slot oriented horizontally.
The eyes, it was said, were the windows into the soul; despite the bestialness, I saw that Jespar’s soul knew only the slow dread of pain to come. The mayfly was in that awkward phase between lad and man proper, no more than perhaps sixteen if the bounty was to be believed. He’d been misborn to the merchant family of the Hecânsios but shunned and given to the Church; though the priests were wont to snuff out undesirable omen-touched, they did not do so to those whose talents could be used in service of Lucifer. Jespar was to become an inquisitor, trained in the arts of war and magique; instead, at the age of fourteen, he had escaped from the Church.
I stood before him, judge, accuser, and executioner; what was his crime? He was a no-good thief that had gotten into the coffers of a rather irate nobleman. Sure, there was already a five Talent bounty on him before that for desertion and dereliction of duty, but the slip-up on the thievery had added the final four plus one more tacked on for good measure; ten Talents total—the same blood-price that the sororicide had incurred.
Footsteps approached from the south, my tongue tasting the live edges of their unsheathed weapons through my compact with Abeloth. These were inquisitors whose help I had requisitioned by right of the bounty. Each would receive one silver Crown which meant that my payment was actually nine Talents and seventeen silver Crowns.
Beyond the malaise, I saw dejection in Jespar’s face. I saw the ground-down, flagging will of someone that had run all his life. I saw acceptance before death but it was not the iron-and-helbent sort possessed by the witch that I had slain; it was the hangman’s noose where hope has no meaning for forgiveness has no place.
My choice then was to either chop off his head or to let him go; else the inquisition would pry-out whatever information it could through means and methods that no sane person can describe without so losing it.
Though I attempted to play the part of an unfeeling bounty-hunter, the persona was at best skin-deep. Both Naenia and René had done heinous, unspeakable crimes that appalled both me and my familiar spirit; but Jespar? The mayfly was a boy, scared and feckless, and nothing more. His only sin was being born and I would not kill someone for the colour of their skin.
The Éder were storytellers and I had had my fill of the tales of ‘mud-bloods’ being lynched, hung on the boughs of cerim trees as if strange and macabre fruit. I was tired of the unfairness of the world and if I did nothing to stand up to it, the status quo would continue. The cogs and gears would ever turn on the same track. Foolhardy and foolish and braver and more courageous than I’d ever been or had any right to be, I said the following ten words: “Run along, Jespar. I will not hunt you any longer.”
The lad took a moment to recover his strength of spirit and then dove into the shadows as if a fish into water. The footsteps had been close enough to bear witness to what I had done; but I was beyond reproach, no matter what insults and slurs and condemnations they hurled at me.
A guilty conscience needs no accuser.
An innocent conscience needs no advocate either.
Of the three inquisitors dressed in the black regalia of their order, one stood out as leader for the pauldrons on his shoulders were well-decorated with reliquaries and seals; his weapon of choice was a bardiche, etched with rúna of severance and binding. The other two circled me for I did not run. I couldn’t, really. The blood in my veins had been wrung dry these past three nights and I would not risk drawing upon the scarce well of my broken heart.
I closed my eyes and let the compact between me and Abeloth taste the air, sheathing that sixth sense for war along the scabbard of my other faculties, natural and supernatural, so that in my blindness I saw better than with sight.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Alephen demanded sacrifice in exchange for Their blessings and so I paid Them Their blood-price for an Éderi’s words are sacrosanct and their lies are repaid in double.
Bolts of phlogiston waylaid me and I cut them down with my blade, my golden bones repelling what remained. The fire and brimstone of God fell upon me but me it did not fell.
Seeing that sorcerie was moot before their target, the inquisitors turned to the sureness of steel. The bearded axe struck down as a rapier poked left and a falchion dove right; I danced between them, letting the night of my cloak hide my form as I parried with the strong of my blade the bardiche.
I danced then not with live steel but with Death Herself, a lowly pilgrim such as myself seeking ascension from the depths of Hel. The Thousand-Eyed-and-Twelve-Winged Silence barred my path—the gall of my actions made manifest.
A backstep took me into the tail-guard as did a rapier pierce my shoulder; I may know where every live edge was in relation to my tongue but no divination can save a man from a sure, inexorable doom. But I would not take it lying down; I would fight until the bitter end.
Lamaré made a rather crude remark that was lost to the storm of steel as was my left ear-lobe—my favourite one as it was not a mangled lump of cauliflower like the other.
I performed the masterstroke of the Mantigore’s-Reposte that could only be launched from the tail-guard, so taking the arm that held the falchion by the elbow and being twice-skewered like a stuck pig by the rapier through my bicep.
I repaid an ear for a hand but my tally of sins against the Luciferine Church were yet to be pardoned. Like the serpent coiled at the bottom of the Lévayathan’s Cross, my foes were; patient and ready to strike at the most opportune moment.
The bardiche had retreated for a moment and now it returned with a vengeance, locking Ashen between its beard and haft; and so I was skewered thrice, in the jugular no less. It felt like swallowing a lump of welded-together razors as my Abelothian tongue was sensitive to such steel seven-fold.
My wounds did not heal as they once did and my limbs moved only so fast and strong as a sacrūna ensorcelled with the charm of Tel-Tzora; I was matched in speed, flagging in strength, and unmatched in torpor. I was rendered mortal once again, brought low like quarry exhausted by the hounds, ankles nipped at for so long it was no wonder that the talon d’Achille had been bitten.
The Mantigore’s-Reposte had left my steel in the crown-guard by my face and from there I struck up and out, taking an eye of the axe-wielder and blinding the other with bleeding. Yet still my tally was not in equilibrium—my end was sure, then I knew; I would swallow the drop of gall.
Shoulder for tail, ear for hand, throat for eye; breath for nothing.
From lung to lung, the rapier penetrated, striking and grazing my heart-amber and so sending me insensate to the ground of the alleyway in a fit of convulsions, muscles seized as if by lockjaw—writhing, rapturous, spasmic excruciation.
My mouth foamed and my eyes rolled into the back of my skull as did my tongue taste of my own blood; my heart, Gods, how it hurt. It was a pain of death worse than grief and more maddening than withdrawal; more staining on the soul than the blackest of regrets.
The little death of sleep welcomed me with open arms and there I laid my head to rest. I hoped that I would awake but you already know that I am a recovering addict to the draught of hope.
I came here not to win but to lose and lose I did.
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I awoke in restraints and would come to regret ever having been born.
Sterling of silver and sorrow-gold and oricalc; I could not bend nor overpower. Grammarie was etched into the manacles, so complex and omitted that I could not discern the component rúna. I was chained to the wall of a gaol, no window to tell me if I was deep in the bowels of the Cairn or in a donjon that overlooked Saint-Getaine. An ambarique lamp buzzed incessantly above me, wan and flickering.
Without my sword and without recourse, I watched and waited, conversing with Lamaré in spirit to pass the time. One might think that bare, damp, grimey stone was uncomfortable on the back—and it was—but the way the chains held me up such that only the tips of the toes touched said stone was worse.
But pain to a vampyre is but a draught. I got used to it and it fled from my mind as Lamaré jumped anxiously from thought to thought; though I was level-headed, I was only so because of the man in my heart.
If I broke, he would break with.
Speaking of, the chunk of amber in my chest had mended somewhat from that last scrape. With a fumbling and blind spiritual touch, I knew that lines criss-crossed the lattice-work as if spiders working a web. As if lightning frozen within glass.
The iron-banded door in front of me had a slot which pulled to the side to reveal two eyes utterly devoid of empathy. They were not dark but instead wan red; they chilled me to the bone because I knew to whom they belonged: Pierre Picard D’Amice.
At the sight, Lamaré became deathly silent.
Steel scraped against steel, sparks flying of both metal shavings and of ambaricité. The door was heavily warded with grammarie even more complex than the sigils that bound me in thrall. The hinges were rusty and creaked worse than an old vessel at sea—made so by design, I’d come to know.
In walked a man that was much my opposite. Where I was young, he was old. Where I was hail and hearty and stout, he was liver-spotted and feeble and weak of arm. Where I was black-haired, he was ash-touched. Where I was sun-kissed cinnamon, he was pale as salt and as severe as salt thrown in the wound.
“You will tell me where is the body of my son. And you will tell me now.”
His voice did not crack and it did buckle and it did not cut and it did not make me crumble. All in all, it was the voice of an old man; no more, no less.
I felt Lamaré coil into himself as if a snake eating its own tail out of fear.
“Now that you mention it, I hadn’t thought of it—last I saw it, the husk was drained dry somewhere in between Jacques and Marlené; staked through the heart on a wooden fence post.”
You know that defensiveness that you feel towards a friend or loved one? That part of you just cannot forgive evil done against them; that part of you that will kill to protect not yourself but another. That rage that knows no bounds of morality but that of kith and kin.
The beast within me had awoken before only in situations of significant duress and bodily harm. My body may now be healthy, but my mind, my soul did not know that I was not currently under attack, only that I was in pain. That petty, disgusting man-shaped thing in front of me was an affront to my sensibility of how a father should treat their son.
I wanted Pierre Picard D’Amice to die slowly and I would not suffer it from anyone but from mine own hands.
Power flooded me, breaking against a dam that held but just barely. I strained at my restraints, with strength to rival a nephilim; ambaricité arced thick and jagged from me and that was all. I understood then, after the anger had run its course, that the manacles were charmed to feed off of any force applied upon them and so no raw power of my own could break me from my chains.
“Very well. Lord-Executioner Alexiaries, the murderer is at your disposal.”
A shrill man entered as Pierre exited; the Lord Executioner was hook-nosed and small in stature with raven-hair that befits such a carrion-feeder. A golden cross was hung around the pious man’s neck, rosary beads rather than a chain, soaked through with a harsh alquemique. I could smell the holy water from here. Thrice-distilled spirits with some unguent or another with traces of sandalwood, the tree of Sandalphon—a minor Herald under the Apostle of Holocaust and Hubris; Abasdūran the Poison-of-Kings, the Unmaker, wielder of the Sword of Eden whose name is Aphelion.
Fitting that I had nothing else but my own hubris to blame for landing myself before a disciple of Abasdūran.
“An audience with an ink-blood? My, oh my. What a pleasant surprise~.”