18. A Taste of the Sublime
[Designation: SCOURGE]
[Instrument Class: DEIFIC]
[Anchored Realm: DEVALEM (+5)]
[Item Description: If thou shouldst lack purpose, let thy shackles teach thee the meaning of toil. If thou shouldst desire knowledge, let thy chains guide thee unto the ends of the earth. And if, after all this, thou shouldst still cling to the safe anchors of existence, let the scourge of the Soulless shrive thee of thyself.]
***
The being was almost too beautiful to be real. They were clad from head to toe in radiant armor—a lotus-white field streaked with gold and wrapped by a ghost-blue aura.
The chestpiece featured innumerable engravings that together formed a roughly circular shape, which Serac immediately recognized as a ‘mandala’, with more than passing resemblance to the one found on REVOLVER’s grip. From the Deva’s back rose flowing mantles of golden light that gave them a winged appearance—like an angel, Serac found herself musing in awe.
The Deva’s face was obscured by their helmet, crested with feathers and veiled by a mesh of woven silk. Upon the forehead sat a large elliptical jewel that glinted faintly from within and appeared to watch its surroundings as though it were an eye.
And now that the Souldust-storm had cleared, it became apparent that the Deva wasn’t alone. For they sat astride the back of an enormous dog, one that easily cleared Zacko in height and dwarfed its own rider in size.
Lean and rather wolf-like in appearance, its shimmering white fur poked out in tufts between the pieces of a golden canine armor. The dog too had a fancy name, one labeled by Pathsight as: [DEIFIC Steed: SKYHOWL the Prismatic Hound].
Yet, despite the Deva’s exquisite features and their almost equally impressive pet, Serac’s attention eventually settled on the plainest, ugliest object in the whole package.
The Deific Instrument SCOURGE, much like its six-shooter cousin, was rather understated in design, with a cracked leather handle that was well-worn from use and five barbed lashes that were rusted with age. The Deva held the whip in their gauntleted right hand in a loose posture, letting the tendrils hang low to the ground.
Despite the Deva showing no signs of wanting to use the thing, Serac took a subconscious step backwards, cowering under SCOURGE’s imagined—no, remembered—menace. Her heart pounded with the same fear that had once gripped her ghost. Her skin burned with the same pain that had left its marks lifetimes ago.
The being that stood before her—in the here and now—was too beautiful to be real and too fearsome to be anything but.
And when the being called ‘Sublimity’ finally spoke, it took Serac a fraught moment to realize they’d done so. Not only because she couldn’t see the Deva’s mouth move, but also because the voice itself gave no clues as to its location. It sounded at once far away and like it’d risen from Serac’s own throat.
“Greetings, young traveler.” Sublimity’s register was neutral and their timbre mellow, still giving no clues as to their sex. “I hope I didn’t startle you too badly. I might’ve left the fiends in your doubtless capable hands, were I not so eager for us to speak. I just thought that my method would be quicker.”
No argument there, and Serac made no effort to put up one. She did note, however, that the Deva had referred to ‘traveler’, singular. They seemed to be addressing only one of her or Zacko, and she had the sneaking (and unpleasant) suspicion that it was her.
“A Rakshasa of few words, aren’t you?” Sublimity continued after a short silence. “No matter. It’s understandable, given the abrupt nature of our meeting. If you won’t speak for yourself, will you at least answer my questions? Starting with… what is that?”
The angel in radiant armor hadn’t moved a single muscle. Yet, somehow, Serac’s conscious thoughts immediately attuned to the six-shooter in her right hand.
She glanced at the handgun, half-expecting Trippy to feed her lines. When no such assistance proved forthcoming, she had no choice but to speak her mind plainly.
“It’s REVOLVER. My Deific Instrument. But… you can see that on Pathsight, can’t you?”
She’d thought her answer an innocent and sufficiently honest one. But what she felt next told her that the opinion wasn’t shared by her interviewer.
The sensation was twofold. First, there was a precipitous drop in the ambient temperature, from the sweltering heat that was typical of Naraka to a frigid chill that was anything but.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
This was followed by a headache, mild in its intensity but terrifying in its familiarity. A slight tightening of Serac’s Circlet. The realization chilled her to the bone, far more effectively than the cooled air.
“These questions are of considerable import to me,” Sublimity spoke again, with unchanged mellowness and neutrality, “so I’d like you to extend the basic courtesy of answering them in earnest. I ask again, what is that in your hand?”
“What do you mean what?” Serac blurted, her voice rising along with her fear. “What do you want to know exactly? That it’s a gun that shoots bullets? That it’s modeled after the Smith & Something or Other Triple Lock? I could read you the whole item description! What do you want from me? Ow!”
This time, she knew she hadn’t imagined it. The Penitent’s Circlet closed around her forehead, sending with it a familiar wave of the most excruciating pain Serac had known here, there, or anywhere.
She fell to her knees in a pathetic imitation of Poise-break, brought a hand up to her head as if she could claw out the Circlet’s iron tendrils from her skull, and fought back the tears that threatened to flood her eyes.
“Hey! Easy there, sir… madam?” Zacko interjected, his voice surprisingly close to Serac’s ears. “She’s trying to answer you, as best she can. Maybe help her out a little? I haven’t known this woman for long, but I can vouch for her being a straight shooter. Pun very much inten—”
Even in the midst of her own torture, Serac opened one watering eye to see what had caused Zacko to lose his words.
Presently, the Manusya was crouched next to her, with one hand resting on her back and the other clutching at his own chest. His face was a frozen mask, carved not in wood but by the painful recollections of his own failings and regrets. The man had been saddened into silence, likely by the same dark magic that somehow held sway over a Penitent’s Circlet.
What the hell is this? Serac found herself screaming into the void. This thing is a Deva? A soul that once had so much Karma that it got to reincarnate in the most virtuous of the Virtuous Realms? What’s virtuous about any of this? Make it make sense!
“I will ask a third time,” Sublimity went on in their perfectly even voice, “and pray do not make me ask a fourth. What is the exact nature of REVOLVER, and how has it come into your possession? It is a Deific Instrument, is it not? How is it that it’s capable of dealing Infernal damage and who knows what else besides? How is it that it was transmuted here in Naraka?”
Is that what this was about? Why didn’t you lead with that? Yet, even as righteous anger blunted her meek fears, Serac was also unsettled by a new realization. So, as a Narakite, I wasn’t supposed to start with a ‘Deific’ Instrument? Why didn’t Trippy tell me this? Why did Trippy—
And that, Serac now knew, had been the crux of the matter all along.
The power that had come to her from nothing. The vehicle of her liberation from the lowest pits of hell. And her faceless savior was now the very sin that had called down divine retribution upon her unsuspecting head. She’d known it was too good to be true…
“It wants to know about me,” the savior in question finally joined the conversation, only to confirm what Serac already knew. “REVOLVER is… unique even among Instruments, in that it defies strict classification. It exists and operates outside the usual rules of Pathsight, and our irregular activities here must have been flagged by the oversight committee up in Devalem. I must admit… I didn’t expect this to happen quite so soon.”
Oh, but you expected it eventually, did you? Just slipped your mind to warn me about it? And what the hell is this about an ‘oversight committee’? These Devas are starting to sound less like gods and more like bureaucrats!
“… You think you jest, but I’d argue that your characterization of Devas isn’t too far off the truth. Putting that aside, what… what should we do?”
Of all the bizarre mishaps that had befallen Serac in the last several minutes, this somehow alarmed her the most. Trippy turning to her for advice? Did hell literally freeze over? (To be fair, it kind of did.)
What do you mean what do we do? What’s going to happen if I just come clean and tell Sublimity about you? Assuming they’ll even believe me…
“Perhaps… confiscation? Forced decoupling, if such a thing is even possible? Or worse…”
Worse? There’s something worse than getting REVOLVER confiscated? Well, you tell me, Mr Voice. Are you ready to give up on our journey so easily? I mean, we were just getting into the swing of things. We beat our first dungeon boss. Broke out of prison. Had this whole new area to explore. Besides, you’re the one that dumped this on me in the first—
“I hadn’t expected much, and yet, I find myself disappointed,” Sublimity interrupted the sidebar, ever in their even keel. Serac widened both eyes to stare at the speaker, fears rushing back in an instant to drown out the anger. She’d taken too long to respond, and the Deva must’ve taken her silence as another non-answer. They still remained perfectly still in their saddle as they added, “It’s not my preference, but you leave me with little recourse. Perhaps a show of force will remind you of your place and loosen your tongue.”
“Wait—”
A blinding flash of light. Accompanied by a ray of icy coldness that whizzed right past Serac’s shoulder.
She turned toward Zacko, only to watch in horror as his entire HP bar disappeared at once. The man’s face was still frozen in a despair only he knew, but even that faded into thin air along with the rest of his disintegrating body.
“Wait!” Serac shouted, swiveling to face Sublimity. “I can explain!”
Too late. For she now saw that the source of the deadly magic hadn’t been the Deva themselves, but rather their Deific Steed. Skyhowl the Prismatic Hound had already parted its lupine jaws, revealing the pulsing cluster of lotus-white energy therein.
Beam of light. Icy coldness the likes of which a native Narakite couldn’t even comprehend. The powerful spell—cast by a dog, no less—passed through Serac’s body in less than the span of a Ksana, but not before disrupting and rearranging every atom inside it.
[1440!]
The last thing Serac held in her eyes as she faded was the image of Sublimity—that devil in radiant armor—leaning forward in their saddle to pat Skyhowl under the chin. The sight was, in all honesty, kind of cute. And Serac wished dearly to never see it again.