In the deafening silence of the sanctuary, the cadre of adventurers shared a meal, speaking of times past and tales both tall and small. Though Lac, Narancan and Tratvgar hadn’t taken direct part in the forging of Cruciata, they’d witnessed its birth and what that entailed. For them to lend Baethen their cards, they needed to be near as the materialised construct would vanish from a distance.
Being visited by a god meant nothing good. Not even Merciful Sybil was without blemish in this regard, Her appearances that of a plague doctor in the wake of a plague. Gods left only sorrow in Their wake.
“What was Whiteshore like?” Baethen asked. “Do they really make sandships from glass there and sail them across the Alabaster Desert?”
“Aye, lad, they do.” Haviershan removed a pouch from the many belts at his side. He’d removed his breastplate, instead donning just a simple undershirt that left his barrel chest bare, the hair crawling up his sternum before stopping just before his collar bones.
“Take a look ‘ere, lads. I bottled up some of their famous lucent-sand that they use to make the prows and bodies of their vessels. They call the lands between Whiteshore and the Caliphate of Al-Kazazakatan the Great Empty. Ain’t a single oasis between the Lucent Gate and the walls of the City-of-Shrouds.”
Baethen took the pouch, opening it to take out the bottle that lay within, a diminutive ampoulette filled to the brim with translucent grains. The sands of Whiteshore reacted alchemically with the salted waters of the Dreadsea such that they became glass and were easy to work with to make great works such as the spires of the caliphates and even the City-of-Mirrors of Assiah.
“It reminds me of etheric-glass.” Baethen said, twisting the bottle about to catch the rainbows that the grains reflected into being. “Since you showed yours, let me show you mine.”
He took out his glass-box device and removed a rectangle from within. A single snap of his authority over the arcana of mercury and fire melted the metal frame off the fragile wafer of ether. Rather than simply throwing it away, Baethen caught the bit of slag and pocketed it for later—metal was rather precious to him and his magicks.
“It scorns heat just like sorrow-steel but breaks worse than sugar glass.”
And then it was Narancan’s turn to share something.
“In Rōnaria, each primogeny—the firstborn of every divine bloodline—is given a bit of the scarlet clay of vermillion.” The lump of red dirt in his hands was smooth and streaked with veins of crimson, leaving not a single trace on his frost-bitten fingers. “It isn’t true primordial, Qadmonic ichor, mind; it’s more a keepsake than anything else. A good luck charm…”
The mood soured a bit after that but Baethen did not blame the Rōnarian much if at all. It was clearly a sore spot for him to speak of his banishment. The man was slow to speak, shying away at more than a few words every round. That he spoke was cause enough to understand that he too was unnerved like the rest of them.
“Me family gave me a trinket, too.” Baethen said to fill the void of speech. “A card of Morophesh. [Celestial-Dew] it was called. Saved me rump after the sky-gorger.”
“Oh yeah, ye did get eaten by a dragon that one time.”
“Well, apparently I taste like the Devil’s taint because the bugger spat me out.”
“Poor Miro.”
After the chuckles died, Lac told them a yarn about how her girl’s parents had once hosted an angel and only known so after the thing blessed their bedhouse so that it would never grow infested with pests, be they bloodfly, wyrd-toad or errant feyry.
Though the story came close to the thing which everyone was trying to avoid thinking about, it proved a nice reprieve nonetheless. Apparently, they’d renamed the bedhouse The Angel’s Rest; it was located on the opposite side of Reordran and Baethen ran in different circles to boot. He’d never seen it himself but had heard of wandering spirits walking amidst men and blessing and cursing in accordance with their nature and that of their hosts.
Misero, God-of-Beggars—born of secretive Alunariat’s deprivations as an archangel of the abyss and arisen to the status of deity by Unnumbered-Loken’s capriciousness—walked in the shadow of every vagrant. ‘Forget not to show love unto strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares’ was the god’s one and only tennent, motto and scripture, carved into the threshold of every hostel and bedhouse from the Risensea to Worldsend.
Everywhere and anywhere where one sold lodgings, there was at least a single misero within, sleeping soundly. There had been many a time when Misero was denied hearth and, in so doing, wrought wrack and ruin upon the miserable so that, in the end, when they are without home and wanderers once again like the Nephalem, they understand. By Fata-Morgana’s hand and the Wyrd—the Weave of Fate Itself—many a prideful man and woman were brought low so that they might learn and know what it is like to crawl upon the dust on your belly.
All it takes is a single wrong step and the ensuing tumble brings you to the bottom of the pit where wits and strength of body are all that separate dead men from living monsters.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Charity alleviated the woes of another for, either way, those woes would find their way shared with you whether you liked it or not. A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth and all that.
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Of all people that Baethen expected to visit him in the night, Narancan was not one of them. Still half-asleep in Broken-Babylon’s Land-of-Dreams, Baethen had said: “No offense, you’re handsome and all but you are too thin a twig for my taste. Thicken up a bit and then I’ll reconsider.”
The man sputtered something fierce before he explained that he came just to talk. Last time Baethen saw a man trip over so many words, that man had been Miro after he bedded him the night before he left for the Evergaol.
“Oh, so you came for some tongue waggin’, not wrestlin’. I’m of a mind to do that.”
Well, truly, Baethen wanted to swear at the man for interrupting his sleep—slumber hadn’t come easy, what with the weight in his shadow, be it old or new. But he had a feeling that Narancan really did need to talk.
“What was it like in the belly o’ the beast? If you don’t mind me askin’, that is.”
Strange, why was he interested in that, now of all places and times?
“Well, it weren’t comfortable. A bit too humid and dark and suffocating and horrifying. I heard these words that the devil spoke, somehow—a whisper in my mind like wind through hair. It spoke of Azabre-Dul. The word seemed like maybe a title of some sort. Perhaps even the name of a person or place? It reeked of a mix of Woedenite and Pharamese. Maybe even Old Kolithil.”
Narancan’s rose-coloured skin went ashen like a funerary flower, all the blood draining from his face. Baethen hadn’t realised the reaction until the silence caught up to him, his eyes turning to catch the Field-Ser’s features. It was worse than the time that he’d become a devil, if only for but a lick.
“Never speak that name near a Rōnarian.” He said, softly, like the trees had ears and they did, owing to the events of before. “It is sacrilege, it is forbidden, it is a sentence of death.”
Now that woke him up.
“What’s it mean?”
Narancan looked up to the host of stars above.
“‘Azabre’ means ‘the bones’ in my tongue and ‘Dul’ is… well, you know the name of the place in which we tread.”
Rimare-Tul, in modern parlance, was Deadman’s Point. In the old Woedenite language—a branch of the Kolithil which all nations of Kataban spoke some variation of—it was the Crags-Where-Men-Go-To-Die.
Though Baethen already understood the general direction where he was going with it, Narancan spelled it out for him.
“It is the graveyard of the Gods, the place where all souls go to die once the last game is played. A vast tomb of salt, the ash of the stars fallen to Eot.”
Narancan kneaded his clay lump with fervent terror and did not say a single thing more before he stole away into the night to sleep alone.
Slumber had come slow before and now it came awfully quick, no matter how much Baethen felt spooked by the exchange. As if the jaws of Babylon closed around his head to devour him into the Land-of-Dreams, he closed his eyes and surrendered to Babylonia’s inexorable pull.
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A masked figure silent-still lay within a host of dust and listened to a choir of devils sing, each and every fallen angel horned with the wages of their original sins, their halos long since broken for Sol would not suffer the Fallen to possess His light, that purifying, all-consuming flame.
Mother, O Mother Mine.
The devils cavorted and danced with abandon, their cloven hooves beating upon the dust so that great clouds billowed ‘round and ‘round about them, the eye of the storm.
The flesh burns black under the midnight sabbath.
Like shadows, they were, reflections of something, somewhere else.
Seven mouths sing the lament of Azabre-Dul.
From among the throng of dust, seven faces looked upon the devils, each one a primarch fear of humanity made flesh. First among them was that of Darkness for there was no worse terror than that which the mind conjured for itself. Second among them was that of the Deep, for fathoms and falls alike hide within them the jaws of Death, the Third Primarch.
Death to the Gods, the devils sang, beating their fists upon their chests as drums and wielding instruments wrought of desiccated cadavers. Shrunken, brainless heads shook hissing cacophonies and sinew-string ouds strummed the dirge of Gehenna, that of damnation.
Death to the Gods.
From the Fear-of-Death comes that of Disease, the rotten and the putrid, and after all has dried and hunger claws at the bowels and thirst at the throat, Drought is that which Man fears.
Thrice, We say, death to the Gods.
After five fears, there is the second-to-last, that of fear itself. It is the bedfellow to the scared and the craven and the coward and the victim and the killer; it is the slow Dread of pain to come, that no matter how far you’ve run, I will catch you.
Mother, O Mother Mine.
Last of the Seven Primarchs was Damnation, the ultimate fear wrought of the previous six and made one under the Fifteenth Hand. Though the others were older, and invoked deeper primacy, they could not contend against the fear of the eternal, of the neverending.
When at last, their dreadsong was done, the archdevil at the centre of the cavortation turned to look at the masked figure in silence. They remained this way until the masked one retreated into the nothingness of the dust, neither acknowledging the other if but for their stares.
When the mascaracsam disappeared, the archdevil sagged in relief.
Of all the firstborn progeny of the Major Arcana, there none more feared than that of the Unnumbered One. Death might be nameless but this was not and it was known by all those who feared It so. This was what Fear Herself feared, that which She could not predict nor understand, beyond the ken of even immortals.
Though devils dwelled in darkness, they, too, like all mortals feared the moonless night for in the moonless night there lay Goghiel the Watcher and you do not wake the Watcher.