XXIII
Naranca
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> The root of the Narancan Empire’s name is three-fold.
>
> The first aspect is etymological: the Emperor Narancan’s given name is an archaic word for ‘orange’; the few old-world texts that survived the Purge note that orange cultivars then were bitter, so it suggests that the Father of Vampyres was so named because he was born with a puckered-up face or some such.
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> The second aspect is sociopolitical. Narancan would not suffer an empire that did not know his name or that did not integrate him into its pantheon. When faced with the dilemma of bending the knee or dying by a horde of night-spawn, you damn-well bend the knee. Those that did not fall in line were wiped off the face of the earth. We only know they exist because Narancan would not let us forget—the object might have been stricken but the shadow cast stays with us till this day. The Éder’s secretive language is one such example; the nomads keep their tongue to only themselves, not speaking it in earshot to any not born from an union of two full-blooded Éderi. We know only a single word from the lorekeepers and that is the name for their people: Éder. Scholars argue themselves blind in speculation as to its definition but I will not—the Éder take their secrets to the grave and take those that should not know them there as well.
>
> The third aspect is metaphysical and it is poetic: though the outside of an orange is eponymously so, the insides hide a red to rival even vermillion. Naranca is the color of slaughter and genocide, of valleys that flow not with milk and honey but rather blood and tears.
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> Naranca is the name of what remains of the world in the wake of the God-King.
—Rosarium Philosophorum: Le Petit Rosaire Grimoire by Perenelle Flœbrégie; Chapitre Une: La Fin de L’empire Éternel, pg. 36, paragraphe 25.
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The ‘ashes of time’ was an appealing turn of phrase for a lost soul.
Low Byzantium, if I’m not mistaken; it was a leftover vestige of the Omniglot, the Tongue of Tongues, the language of Babel before God struck the Tower down and sundered humanity’s understanding of each other. This was the Luciferine Church’s reasoning for war and strife and casteism and poverty and whatever else the Blind-Faith needed to condemn but did not want to change.
Now, not all Luciferines are soulless husks. Most are just the common folk, land and gentry. Had some of the most pious, God-fearing people nurse me back to health after I caught a sour wound from stepping on a rusty nail. Lockjaw, tetanus, the contortions, the conniptions, call it whatever you will—it almost killed me and would’ve if not for them: Guillam and Jullienette, a childless couple, their sons and daughters having long since gone to look for better fortunes outside Saint-Getaine as the Cairn had more than enough cobblers and factory-work weared down the soul something quick
They’d taken me in as one of their own, having found a shivering mess of a lad near their doorstep. It would’ve been so easy for them to just have called the guard and the Men-in-Tabards would take the unseemly cripple away. But no—when I was hungry, they gave me food to eat; when I was thirsty, they gave me water to drink; when I was feverish, they put damp cloth on my temples; when I was so close to death that I could taste the gall of the Reaper’s blade, they prayed for me.
They died a year or so ago when cholera broke out in Getaine’s Cairn and the saints were deaf to our pleas. Why the Heavenly Host spared me, a man that would become bedfellow to the Night-God, while He turned a blind eye to the devout, I would never know.
Not all Luciferines are soulless husks, it’s just that all monsters seem to be born of God or His blood. Certainly didn’t help that I had to look at a golden cross while I was interrogated, while I was tortured, while I was castrated, while I was—
Flashes of the darker ministrations of Lord-Executioner Alexiaries came upon me unbidden and I did my best to attempt to dispel them as I’d rather not retread the path of my torment and so I return to wandering the dark, lost in the ashes of time.
Saint-Getaine’s Underbowels aren’t just composed of sewers and man-made burrows and catacombs but also caverns and naturally-formed tunnels. I hadn’t felt unhewn stone in a good while, my naked feet raking over calcite formations of the botryoidal variety which are the most comfortable sort, as I don’t need to remove crystal splinters from my soles every now and then.
Down and down and down I went, Luaith-Liath farther and farther away, above my head as if the North Star. I did not follow the sword for it would spell my doom no different than that of the Reaper and so…
Down.
Down.
Down.
I went.
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It was difficult to know when you were asleep and when I was awake. Nothing quite felt real; the world inchoate and I, insensate. Madness descended upon you with vulture’s feathers, black and terrible. The Thousand-eyed and Twelve-winged Silence of Dumah held out the blade with a single drop of gall and the mouth ever inched open.
Who was I and who were you? Raphaël Son-of-the-Éder or Lamaré D’Amice Solaire?
The North Star offered no salvation so instead you followed that weight down below, that longing pull of slumber once taken that none would ever arouse from but once upon the return of Nameless Christ. So easy would it be to forevermore surrender, so calm would I become when I was not.
The final threshold beckoned and you answered its call.
“Et’ja gêdra al-ser’ain, Adronach E’átanath.”
Elderspeech awoke me from my hypnagogia—that waking dream gestated in the all-nothing of the earth’s womb. A vestige of the Omniglot, I heard mine own true-name in the progenitor tongue, my very soul laid bare with naught but the spoken word.
Et’ja was an omission of Etja-Maj whose literal translation corresponded to ‘sever the thread’ which meant ‘to cease’ or ‘stop’. There was a glyphe for ‘cessation’ as well, Dagesh, but it was only invoked in certain contexts where it was the subject rather than the predicate; an imperative sentence such as this one did not possess a subject.
Gêdra was an omission of Gê-Adra whose literal translation corresponded to ‘anchored by root’ which meant ‘to-bind’ or ‘seal’; whilst Ser’ain was an omission of Serim-Ain whose literal translation corresponded to ‘reflection of being’ which meant ‘shadow’.
Gêdra al-ser’ain was a roundabout manner of saying ‘slumber’ for only when someone is sleeping is their shadow bound. The et’ja verb was a command for me to awaken while the rest of the sentence was my true-name spoken in rúnari, though not the modern kind. The suffixes -eth and -ath had been trimmed some time around the Second Century according to Lamaré.
Now that you know what had been whispered into my ear and had saved me from insanity, I shall tell you of the secret beneath Saint-Getaine. Black comedy that my life had become, it would have been safer for me had I simply succumbed to the delirium of the darkness for my saviour was not from Heaven but rather Hel.
Stone unfurled around me, each brick hewn of the purest and reddest sanguinello marble mined a sea away in far-flung Asfaraba. The mausoleum was circular with a domed vault weighing heavily above me and wrought of black-alabster which was inset with heart-stones to render a simulacra of the night sky. Pillars of blood-silver, of verminous argent, held up the firmament, reliefs of godlings and heralds and saints and monsters and d’yabels and ærengeists carved upon the bones of this tomb.
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For a moment I thought that two stars had fallen from the tapestry above but no. Those were eyes, just like mine own. I recognized that baleful stare anywhere, that monstrous gluttony that knows no end, that would scour the flesh from your bones if only to sate the ravenous abyss that now occupied the space of the soul.
There, at the centre of the palatial mausoleum, was an ancient vampyre, a relict of the times of Narancan. Older than all the living empires of today, more cunning than the cruellest beast, heartless as the taxman and hungry as the wolf.
Every bone in my body locked in place as my flesh and spirit were overcome by His presence. Without knowing how I knew, I knew that I stood before an Elder—a centuries-old primarch of my kind that had drunk the heart-blood of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of men.
My heart-sight came upon me unbidden, the Elder a fallen star to my etherial senses, a refulgent idol carved of rubis-ambré, a fallen god. The eye within my mind squirmed, whether by fear or anticipation, I did not know.
One moment, the Elder was within His erect sarcophagus of unblemished alabaster and then another He was before me, imposing as the Grim Reaper and with a gravitas to rival all executioners, even their Lord.
A single faux pas and I would die without realising that I’d died.
“Who art Thou, O Child of the Elder Blood? Why hast Thou awoken Us from Our slumber? Has the God-Emperor beaten back the rains?”
Every word of His boiled the blood in my veins and sent my flesh to writhe as it bubbled into vermillion leeches and sinous larvæ. He’d awoken me from my ceaseless wandering and unreality, yes, but catatonia was preferable to pain that evaporated tears into vapour from its heat alone.
The Elder did not miss a single detail, His eyes scouring me and then widening in realisation. His next words were still like brands to my temples but red-hot rather than white which was to say that the pain was nigh-unbearable and so would not render me mute.
I was well accustomed to speaking under duress of this sort.
“A Prince? We did not know the God-Emperor had sired new progeny. Welcome to Our death-cradle and apologies, Your Divine Majesty, for the lack of decorum.”
He bowed to me as if I were a king and not a naked man but then again, the ancient vampyre was just as bare as me—thread decomposes after a half-millenium, after all. The Elder was sinewy and spindly, desiccated muscle over a lithe and limber frame. He was completely hairless, bald of pate and bereft of beard, his ears large and tapering into bestial points while an aquiline nose lent Him the regal air of a magistrate. Half-man, half-animal; all of the malice of both.
The skin He wore was deathly-white while mine was tub āq-red, both of our canines prominent fangs when we opened our mouths to converse. My teeth were gilded in an amalgam of aurum and my hair ashen as the bark of a sacred rowan tree, marking me out as even stranger than the mythical being before me.
“Do not apologise, O venerable Elder, for it is with Us that the fault lies.”
The dialect that the ancient vampyre spoke was Old High Narancan, used by the noble-blooded courts of the Eternal Empire before it became not-so-eternal. My Éderi heritage and my acquired vampyrism was what saved me then from a quick and instantaneous death.
“We’ve happened upon Thine chamber of katabasis without reason but for fear of death. We are hunted upon the surface for Our choice of wine.”
Old High Narancan was pompous and insufferably haughty but it was worth every long-winded soliloquy of a sentence no matter how obtuse.
Death-cradles—id est, chambers of katabasis or tel-palaces—are from where the myths of higher vampyres sleeping within coffins originate though there are still debates about the roots of that specific bit of folklore to this day. Before God’s Death, Elders had to indulge in frequent and long bouts of torpor lest they devolve into feral beasts from Their consummate hunger. After God’s Death, these very same ancients still needed to do so for the former reason but also for a new, latter purpose: to hide away from the blood-rains lest They die a bloody death.
Ironic, poetic, and comedic at the same time—God truly loves making us into fools.
I knew of death-cradles through Éderi ken whilst for Lamaré it was a matter of popular fact as modern nobility enjoyed speaking of such dreadful things. Commoners were not to know that ancient vampyres dwelled beneath them but it was an open secret that could easily be spun into flights-of-fancy or even heretical thought should the need arise. Either you were a madman for suggesting that the Old Ones survived the Fall, or worse: a leech-worshipper.
‘I’ll worship your leech anytime, mon ami~’
My current state was not conducive to my spectre’s degeneracy so I ignored him whilst I spoke with Death incarnate. We both were naked and our words were so formal that I felt part of high society if said high society were composed of nudists.
Again, God truly loves making us into fools in the black comedy that He’s bid us to perform upon the stage known as the universe.
“A shame that the Emperor hast yet to break the False-Idol’s curse. Alas, it be but a matter of tide and time before the Anathema art uprooted from the æther.”
Well, even if I did die, at least I’d die an expert in metaphysics. No living soul knew for sure that God’s dead body was in the ether and that remained true as I was, technically, considered a revenant. True vampyres are in a strange sort of limbo in regards to classification as we occupy a tenuous valley in between the peaks of hæmophaga (lesser blood-eaters such as alps and bruxæ), therionthropiæ (man-beasts and cursed ones such as weirwolves and strigòi), phantasmagoriæ (soul-eaters such as maras and færies) and ophidophaga (snake-eaters that possess the blood of würms such as lévayathans and wyvernes). Most scholars place us in therionthropiæ as its a flexible clade that overlaps with many other monstrous bloodlines.
I tend to ramble when at Death’s door if you haven’t realised.
“Correct Us if We utter falsehoods, Prince, but art Thou compacted with a foreign idol? We sense Sathariath but also another mark upon Thine soul. Art sharper than any blade of damascus and stronger than any plate of adamant; a most fell power that embodies severance in its purest form.”
Any word might be my last but an Éderi does not utter lies so I spoke only truth. Though said truth was couched in omission for I rather liked living this side of the pale.
“A spoil of war pillaged from the False-Idol—His own sword taken so that We might slay His own blood.”
The Elder knew it to be true through whatever sorcerie He employed to divine my true-name. My tongue was forfeit to Abeloth such that any lie would cut it into pieces; beyond my roots to the Old Ways of Kalé, the soul-binding would exact its toll should I trespass upon its precepts.
With an agreeing nod that commended me for my cunning in stealing the enemy’s own weapon, the ancient night-spawn conjured a pendant from the shadows; He plucked it from the all-nothing as if a fruit from the boughs of a cerim tree. I recognized it as a heart-stone ensconced within the roof of the mouth of a raven’s skull, tombac binding it in place while filigree of blood-silver wove around the bone in the manner of roots and rivers.
“We shan't trouble Thine Divine Majesty any longer. Please, accept this obeisance in the name of the God-Emperor.”
The Elder handed me the relique while bowing and I bowed back as good manners were good manners and all that. The raven-skull pendant was light as Azazel’s black feather and heavy as the burden of grief—in my hand, I knew this to be a reliquaire, a phylactère, and what was housed within the vessel was something oh so very foul and grave and alluring.
Like a Lucifer’s bezoar, a single drop of God’s blood was suspended within. Or, better said, a single drop of ichor—of tangible ambaricité, of ether made flesh, of crystallised phlogiston, of pure and consummate power.
“May Thine slumber be dreamless. Emperor protects.”
I had just said ‘bonsoir’ to an ancient vampyre that had razed civilizations, stricken their record from the face of the earth with naught but His very own hands. My mind just could not wrap itself around the absurdity of it all. This was a demi-god, a living deity whose power dwarfed anything contemporary occult science could accomplish; no sacrūna could contend against such a foe. Armies would pale before the nameless Elder.
“Azælaphesh. Emperor protects.”
The Elder flickered from my senses, be they corporeal or ephemeral, retiring to His death-cradle faster than a newborn vampyre such as myself could perceive. The alabaster lid of the sarcophagus lifted up its recessed slot in the floor, sealing the monster within stone.
‘He knew?’ Lamaré exclaimed and I wasn’t far behind.
He had read my mind all this time as if an open tome and yet had decided not to kill me. My life hadn’t been in my hands at all, hadn't been won through sleight of rhetoric or silver of tongue or anything of the sort but rather through the amusement of the wolf finding a pup.
Numb and dumb shock rang through my golden spine as I stood there, my wits far from me at the moment. The cold shiver bade me to look around the mausoleum with new eyes.
I looked up at the facsimile of the firmament and saw two constellations reaching to touch one another. Tracing their origin, the starsigns sprouted from the pillars of Judas’ silver, a legion of hands holding up the sky. I knew then that these six amalgamations had been cultivated and moulded through the sacrifice of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of lives for the verminous argent of Akeldama requires heart-blood to grow its fell crop.
Each pillar housed a central statue cast of the black bronze of Cadmia, a mote gouged around the subjects so as to highlight them. Three men and three women with four of them masked, two of either sex. Each held a relique of some kind in their hands and I recognized two of the statues.
One was a man, regal and imperial and doom-shrouded, while the other was a woman clad in the vestal cloth of the Eternal Empire and the vines endemic to the Western Cairn. Azælaphesh and Saint-Getaine Herself.
As a child of the Éder, I was not much surprised at the revelation. The Narancan Empire fell, yes, but many of its customs persevere till this day such as with their statuettes and mores and whatnot. Religion, no matter how seemingly pure of pagan influence, is a syncretic organism. People cannot help but interpret the mythologies of others through their own theological lenses. Foreign gods become d’yabels and local deities become saints; so on and so forth.
For the second time, I tell you: all beliefs are but branches of the same tree, splittings of the same trunk. Heresy is but the leaf below that is smothered by those above it. Blasphemy is but the root exposed and so shunned to be eaten through by worm and wind. Or, as the Éder say: the all is one.
Behind me, stone ground against stone.