The crags north of Gray Watch

Hour of the Ghost Dawn, December 10th

The ghostly gray of the coming morning was easing toward steely light as Nymir led the way to the Cathedral. Here, quarrying had cut unnatural square crags into the mountains, gray stone halls painstakingly erected by anthrals more concerned with what they took than what they left behind. Into a block at the rear of the abandoned quarry, the cultists had carved their cathedral. It was the most plain building Phaeduin had ever seen, a flat wall, hard corners, an adorned wooden door hammered into a wooden archway.

They’d probably used magic to hollow it out. The music that leaked through the door oozed like a groan, the long-lingering echoes of the Sinner’s Hymns brought from Redfall.

“Do you hear that?” Phaeduin asked gravely as Nymir approached the door.

The man had been nervous all the way, and now Nymir stopped with one hand on the door to flinch around. “What? Hear what?”

“The magic in those hymns you sing. You do know that they’re magic, don’t you?”

Nymir stared, and swallowed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you.”

“You shouldn’t have.” Phaeduin didn’t slow his approach, his armored shadow falling over the door.

Nymir stepped aside. “You don’t have to intimidate anyone to be free of death. God offers it freely.”

“Read the moon, you fool. There is no god, and you’ve died tens of thousands of times.” Phadeuin hit Nymir in the side with the flat of his blade, sending the fearful man tumbling. “Stay outside.”

Hitting the gray stone hard, Nymir rolled to his knees and pulled a knife from his belt. “Wait! I won’t let you hurt anyone!”

* * *

The Angolhills

Mardo had assumed Indirk had destroyed his robes and chiming orb, only to find them in the early morning when he removed the loose floorboards beneath the kitchen table. Apparently, Indirk had found this hiding spot as well; of course a spy would notice a hollow floor. On his elbows beneath the table, Mardo found his robes beneath the floor, the chiming orb wrapped up in them, and there was also a strongbox that he didn’t recognize. Opening it, he found it empty, though there were several spare envelopes filled with the iron slugs that served as ammunition for the RVA’s firearms. Is this where Indirk had hidden her gun? What did it mean that it wasn’t here now?

Hoping that Indirk had chosen to throw her gun into the sea, Mardo slipped his chiming orb into one of the cavernous pockets on his coat and lifted himself from beneath the table. He groaned. His wounds ached incredibly, tormenting him with shocks of pain over any small movement. Red stains still expanded beneath his bandages. As he leaned on the table and waited for the pain to fade, he tensed his hand and claws emerged from his fingertips, digging into the wood.

“Damn them. Damn them.” He struggled against the words, trying not to speak them, but it was all he could do to keep from shouting. “Damn them both!” Since that night, he couldn’t shake the memory of their faces. Phaeduin had seemed a stern but caring father, but there’d been a terrifying ruthlessness to his blade and pistol when he’d turned on them at the embassy. And Myrel’s laughter as they used what they’d learned from Mardo to twist the magic around, as though to mock Mardo for trusting them at all. And Mardo wouldn’t have trusted them, if not for Indirk. If Indirk could turn, Mardo had at first thought to himself, and then convinced the other sorcerers, then perhaps…

Mardo remembered Indirk’s furious gaze, her coldness that hadn’t faded since then. Would she turn on him likewise? Would she also mock him?

Mardo breathed. He struggled to straighten. He let the memories and thoughts fade, but only in the way the pain faded: slowly, imperfectly, haunting just beneath the surface and ready to rise at any moment.

He cast his gaze on the rug where light from the window fell, where Hado used to doze in the mornings.

* * *

The Sinner’s Cathedral

Heedless, Phaeduin shouldered into the doors and they snapped inward. Beyond was a plain gray foyer onto a small maze of narrow hallways and empty rooms. Hymns spilled over Phaeduin’s shoulders like water from a dam, but he slouched callously through them. In the shadowed space, anthrals stopped singing and turned to the sudden light spilling through the door.

Phaeduin found himself immediately looking down upon a sickly-thin, pale sollin, hair rough and patchy like Nymir’s; the ugliness was a symptom. The cowardly panic that paralyzed the man in place was an expression of a deeper disease of character, the stammering, “What? Who are…?” which gave way to silence as the man looked Phaeduin’s bloodied, metal form over.

He’d meant to do this silently, but Phaeduin felt he owed the pathetic man an answer before the end came. “You know who I am.”

“No.” The cultist grabbed at his silk robes, dyed red with blood willingly offered by his fellow devouts. Suddenly, he started to shout. “No! No! It’s come! It’s happening!”

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“Hell is hungry for you,” Phaeduin muttered, surprised by the tiredness in his voice, as he lifted his sword and brought it down as though to chop a piece of wood. He cleaved the man’s torso in half down the middle, then lifted the blade and struck again, and again. He didn’t hear the shouting around him, but sensed the foyer empty. Yes, run away and leave your relics unprotected. A cathedral full of selfish cowards.

There was a metal clatter in the doorway. Nymir cast a skinny shadow. His dropped knife tumbled into the blood.

Phaeduin braced his hoof against the dead man and wrenched his sword free. What remained did not resemble a corpse, just a shattered skeleton wrapped in anonymous meat. Turning the pitiless face of his helmet to the door, Phaeduin said again, “Stay outside, Nymir.”

Nymir grabbed at his chest, struggling to breathe, watching the way the shredded meat still twitched and throbbed, the way organs and veins convulsed as even then they struggled to fulfill their function. He wavered with nausea. Darkness haunted his vision. Nymir dryly muttered the words to a Sinner’s Hymn–“Salvation has come and gone. Lose all hope, the demon is won.”—and backed into the sun. He turned away from the cathedral and sat on the ground, grabbing at his head and whimpering, trying not to listen to the click of Phaeduin’s hooves moving further into the temple, echoing in the shadowed corridors of stone.

* * *

Slowrise District

Among avenues paved in fine white stone and wooden fences overgrown with blooming ivy, Amo followed an affluent man down an incline between two fine boutiques. This was a man who looked to be on his way to buy something, a comfortable smirk on his face, probably a hearty meal in his belly. He showed no awareness of his snickering pursuer until, there where the breeze was scented with salt and flowers, Amo pushed him into a corner and shoved a knife through each of the man’s eyes.

Amo’s cheerful little hum carried magic. The body that fell did not resemble itself, having had Amo’s appearance imposed upon it. Wearing the illusion of the man they had just killed, Amo crouched to push this corpse into a planting bed full of broad-leafed shrubs, where it would not be found until it began to stink.

“One more secret to keep from the others,” Amo muttered to the corpse, feeling a bit sentimental for the face that it wore. Amo knew that looking into one’s own dead eyes was an experience shared by few beings in existence, and sometimes Amo lingered in these moments. Lifeless ochre, glazed and thoughtless, set like congealing oil pooled in skin. Amo hummed. “Especially Phaeduin. He’s too damned good-hearted, all for the commoners. But what must be done must be done, you know? No innocent life is worth a whole nation. But what the hell is innocence anyway? Yeah, actually, fuck it. You’re not me. I’m barely even me.”

* * *

The Angolhills

Hour of the Blood Dawn

Leaving the apartment and pacing through the groaning tenement, Mardo moved with sullen patience. Stepping out into the red-tinted gray sunlight, he stopped and stared at Indirk. She was waiting for him, dressed for work, standing straight-backed and frowning. She’d been watching the tenement door, waiting for him to emerge. Suddenly face to face with her, Mardo found himself at a loss for words, staring down at the woman who had slept so coldly beside him all the night before.

Indirk held him with her gaze while the morning moved around them, anonymous passersby paying them no more mind than the breeze overhead. Eventually, she said, “Well. Looks like we both know how to pull ourselves back together.”

Mardo found himself saying, “I’m still working on it, honestly.”

“It’s one of those things people like us never really finish doing.” The big pocket on her side began to churn. She put a hand inside and the movement stopped. No doubt Avie was in there. This small event between her and her pet drew a sigh from her, and Indirk said more lightly, “We’re late for work, Mardo. Time to go.”

* * *

The Sinner’s Cathedral

Nymir sat on the ground outside the cathedral. Inside, the congregation lay strewn about their narrow halls. Nymir couldn’t face it. He sat with his head in his hands, shaking, staring down upon the Angolhills to the south. It was strangely silent, now that the killing was over. Now that Nymir was the only one left.

Now, as Phaeduin exited, as the click of his armored steps left marks of blood in the shapes of his hooves, as he left a sanguine trail of droplets where his half-absent sword dragged. Phaeduin muttered a quiet, “Thank you, Nymir. I’m done now.”

“Why did you…?” Nymir took a shaking breath and looked up at the man’s back. “Why did you do that?”

“I don’t plan on dying,” Phaeduin said. “Not until I’ve made sure Myrel is safe.”

“I don’t understand! I don’t… How could this… could you…?”

"Don't pretend you don't know." Phaeduin paused and half-turned, holding up an object in his left hand. An orb of transparent glass was half-full of red, the blood inside simmering as though with heat. The blood sang a quiet song, an echo of the sinner's hymns that the Redfall cultists had been singing to it ever since the cathedral had been established. "Don't pretend you don't know what this can do."

Nymir whispered, "How could you possibly know about that?"

"This isn't the first time I've done this, Nymir."

"You..." Nymir took a shivering breath, and then he shocked to his feet, stumbling against the cathedral’s wall and half-falling as he retreated. "You're him. The man who called himself the Mouth of Baelphor."

"Once, I was.” Phaeduin turned the orb of blood in his metal-clad fingers. “But now, thanks to you, I can be again. If I need to be."

* * *

Slowrise District

Amo cleaned their knives on the dead man’s clothes and went back to the main road. As they were stretching, ready to explore the various boutiques and pretend to be rich and interested while actually looking for Myrel, a person with a brilliantly red tail strode past Amo.

A subtle sound of rattling magic moved with the passing stranger. Amo watched from the corner of their eyes. Tall and slender, this woman, with long, brightly red hair as huge as a lion’s mane about her head, a powerful-looking tail of red fur trailing behind her. Amo let her go, pretending not to have noticed her, but there was no mistaking it. Neither masks nor their absence had ever been particularly effective in confusing Amo.

Eventually, still wearing the guise of a rich and self-satisfied man, Amo muttered to themself, “So Norgash is an Othrizen. Makes so much sense, I should’ve seen it coming,” as they turned to follow the woman. Amo saw her vanish down a dark walkway, strangely gray and dusty among the other rich paths. She chose a rather forgettable wooden door to push through, and Amo might’ve overlooked it if they hadn’t been following her. The sign hanging beside the door didn’t help much. It was black wood with black paint on it, the name of the boutique almost illegible.

Maniaque, it said.